


You're Sending All Your Love to War

by Murreleteer



Category: Band of Brothers
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Blackmail, Canon Era, Cock Warming, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Eventual Happy Ending, Haguenau, I'm really not kidding about the whump, M/M, Miscommunication, Non-Consensual Blow Jobs, Non-Consensual Spanking, OTP Feels, Rape, Rape Recovery, Whump, Woobie
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-16
Updated: 2018-05-07
Packaged: 2019-04-23 13:54:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 9
Words: 66,002
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14333862
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Murreleteer/pseuds/Murreleteer
Summary: When a colonel with Nixon family history temporarily takes over Second Battalion, Dick thinks that his biggest problem is going to be keeping Nix and his new CO apart. But when he's caught in a compromising situation, he faces blackmail, darker choices than he could have imagined, and the likely end of his newly-kindled romance with Nix. As the situation grows worse by the day and his men start dying, Dick struggles for survival for Nix, for his battalion, and for his own soul.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> **Content Warning. Please Read:** So, this is whumpfic. Very bad things are going to happen to Dick Winters in this story, and there is going to be massive amounts of angst and shame with more angst on the side. There is explicit non-con (including oral and anal sex, cock warming, and spanking/thrashing). The non-con is not between Nix and Dick, but there's certainly quite a bit of it, and it would be next to impossible to read this fic without reading it.  If graphic non-con whumpfic isn't your bag, please give this one a skip. If graphic non-con whumpfic is your bag, HI! NICE TO SEE YOU HERE! (It has a Winters/Nixon happy(ish) ending, if that makes a difference.)
> 
> I've also fucked around with the timeline surrounding the episode "The Last Patrol" a little bit, mostly extending their time in Haguenau, so now it's a mix of book, show and "I made that up." I did not make up the field manuals quoted in Chapters Two and Three; they're off Archive.org. (I'm sure this is the use intended by whoever uploaded them!)

They say you never hear the bomb that hits you, but Dick sure heard the Fw that dropped it coming, and the flack trying to take it out. Not that it did him any good; he and Strayer were standing in the middle of an open town square, with no cover in sight, and then the building next to them was exploding. In a moment of instinct Dick hadn't known his superior officer was capable of, Strayer threw himself at Dick, shielding him with his body as they both went down.

They hit the street in a tangle, Dick winded hard and face pressed into the mud. His hands pushed at the ground, trying to move, though his brain hadn't caught up with his instincts to tell them where. Then the blast wave hit. Dick heard each fragment of masonry hit the ground, and felt them thud through Strayer's body and then through his, driving them both deeper into the muddy square, and all he could do was close his eyes and wait for the air to clear.

When he heard the last brick fall, Dick forced a breath in, struggling under the combined weight of Strayer and whatever had landed on them. His ears were ringing, and he couldn't see for the mud caking his eyes, but he wriggled forward and out from under Strayer, trying to gather enough wind to yell for a medic. They were both caked in mud and brick dust, and Strayer didn't respond when Dick called his name. When put a hand on Strayer's shoulder, he could feel him breathing, but it was shaky and shallow, and Dick didn't know where to start looking for injuries. 

The battalion was establishing quarters a block down, and the Able Company medic and half of its First Platoon were was there in less than two minutes. They had Strayer free of the debris and on a stretcher before Dick could even tell them he was okay, really, and pull himself unsteadily to his feet to prove it.

It took them even less time to get to the aid station, but somehow Nix was already there. He glanced down at Strayer before crossing to Dick and asking, "Bad?"

Dick shrugged. He had to conserve his breath for a moment before he could say, "Don't know yet. Waiting on the doc."

Nix gave Stayer a second look. The surgeon had his uniform shirt cut away now, and two medics were working on stopping the bleeding. Mud and blood mingled on his neck, staining his blond hair. "I meant you," Nix said.

"Oh. I'm fine." Dick swiped at his face with his sleeve, which only smeared the mud more deeply into his skin. Nix raised his hands like he wanted to take over—to sit Dick down and wash him head to toe—then dropped them. He bit his lip and peered into Dick's face, disbelieving. Dick added, "Strayer took the worst of the hit. I don't..." He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. "Docs haven't said how he is."

"Yeah, you said," Nix said, and Dick realised he was being managed, that Nix thought he was quite literally shell shocked. Maybe he was.

"I'm fine, Lew."

On the table, the surgeon's movements had slowed; the bleeding stopped, he was doing a more thorough check over Stayer's body. Sensing Dick's eyes on him, he glanced up and said, "He'll need to be evaced to Mourmelon. Possibly Paris." He started rattling off a list of non-fatal but serious injuries, which Dick hoped Nix was following, because the ringing in his ears was getting louder, and the edges of his vision were blurry.

"I think..." Dick started, but couldn't remember what he thought.

Nix caught his elbow as his knees buckled and guided him to the edge of a cot. "How about you try being fine lying down, huh?" he said gently. He let his hand linger on Dick's arm for too long. He needed to be more careful, Dick thought vaguely. This wasn't their foxhole on the line outside of Bastonge. Everything between them was still so new that they hadn't yet learned the art of care.

"Thanks," he said weakly, and tried to wave Nix off, but everything felt heavy, and Nix's voice was muffled, like he was speaking from another room. That was good. Dick knew Nix should leave, but didn't want him to go, and closed his fingers around Nix's sleeve instead.

The medic said Dick had gotten his bell rung, but figured he'd be fine; Nix continued to hover, and Dick never quite managed to pass out. Instead he watched vaguely as Strayer was loaded into an ambulance, and listened to the engine noise fade into the clamour of the battalion's temporary quarters.

It wasn't until Nix said something about how Dick had to stop doing this that it sank in that he was in charge, and he had to get moving.

"I have to find Col. Sink," he said and levered himself to his feet. This time he did shrug off Nix's arm and headed into the street. They were moving with all possible speed to the line in Alsace to re-enforce the Seventh Army; they couldn't afford to go without a battalion commander.

Nix opened his mouth, and then closed it and asked, "How about I give you a ride to Regiment HQ?"

Dick couldn't seem to get his thoughts back in gear, but he nodded and let Nix commandeer them a jeep. He wiped at the mud on his face again, then sighed and put his helmet back on. Maybe it wouldn't hurt to lean on Nix just a little. He was a wounded man after all.

* * *

By the time they made Haguenau two days later, Dick's ears had just about stopped ringing and the 222nd Infantry had halted the German advance without their support, though the fight had ground them up bad. They were in the process of pulling back, and the 101st was moving in to hold the line along the river.

Dick was listening to Sink lay out the battalion's quartering and lines when a jeep pulled up. The officer in the back seat was a Colonel from the 17th Airborne, who Dick had a vague feeling he'd seen somewhere before, possibly Upottery. He topped Dick's height by a few inches, and had the shoulders of a line backer. A square jaw and long, iron-grey side burns made him look a little like he'd stepped out of a ferrotype from the Civil War and into ODs and helmet.

Beside Dick, Nix muttered a curse under his breath. Dick turned to him, eyebrow raised, but Col. Sink was already introducing the man as Lt. Col. Chester Muldoon. "He's taking over command of 2nd Battalion until Col. Strayer is back on his feet," he explained. It just about figured that this was the first Dick had heard of it. He'd assumed that he'd be left to run the battalion on his own, much as he did when Strayer was nominally in command and physically miles from the line. "Colonel, this is Captain Winters, 2nd Battalion's XO, and my S3 Captain—"

"If it isn't little Lewie Nixon!" Muldoon interrupted. He had a deep voice with the gravel edge of someone who'd yelled orders over artillery for most of his life. "Your daddy said you'd made a soldier of yourself."

Even just watching Nix out of the corner of his eye, Dick could see the tightness around his mouth for a moment, then Nix smiled and replied in his usual self-mocking tone, "It looks that way, sir."

Sink's eyes flicked between Muldoon and Nix, and his moustache twitched before he said, "Captain Nixon has two stars on his wings, and I expect he'll have three by the time we make it to Berlin."

Muldoon took the mild rebuke with a nod, but gave Nix a look that said they'd talk more later. "What is our deployment, sir?" he asked, and Sink started over again.

While their superiors were distracted, Dick leaned towards Nix just enough that their shoulders bumped. Even the brief contact was enough to tell him that Nix's body was singing like a high tension wire. "Nix?" he asked in an undertone.

Nix shook his head and mouthed, "Later," so Dick let it lie.

Later turned out to be the very end of the day. Muldoon was not, it seemed, cut from the same cloth as his predecessor. Where Strayer had been more than happy to hand over the day to day logistical details—and indeed most of the tactical decisions—to his XO, Muldoon seemed to want to meet ever officer in the Battalion, no matter how junior, and inspect ever billet and OP personally. Dick spent the day trying not to be rankled as Muldoon altered the situation to his liking. The man undeniably knew what he was doing, and he had every right to run the battalion how he choose.

* * *

"Any word on Strayer?" Dick when he got to his billet and found Nix slouched on the floor at the foot of his bed, his boots pulled off, a bottle beside him.

"That bad, huh?" Nix asked.

Dick frowned. He shut the door and locked it before crossing to the bed and stripping out of his jacket and scarf. "No," he said. "He's a fine officer. He wasn't wrong about the mortar position at the river bend." If he was maybe a little over zealous on keeping men on watch versus letting them sleep, well, the 222nd had turned back the Germans from this very riverbank not twenty-four hours before.

"Yup," Nix agreed. "Not a bad word to say about old Chet Muldoon." When Dick leaned over the end of the bed to look at him, he got a blast of whisky off Nix's breath, and a good view of the grim lines around his eyes.

"So," he started carefully. "Lewie?"

Nix laughed, but he didn't sound like he thought it was funny. "I'm glad Luz wasn't there to hear that one. It'll get around anyway. Everyone knows what Chet thinks. Everyone believes him."

Dick slid to the floor and sifted so that his back was to the foot of the bed and his ankles were tangled with Nix's. "Friend of your father's, huh?"

Instead of answering, Nix dropped his head onto his knees and groaned. Dick took that as both a confirmation and a plea to not ask for details. Half the time he thought that Nix had joined the Airborne to get away from his family, who seemed determined to keep him States side for the duration of the war; the other half, he knew that it had been so that he could stay with Dick. Dick had never worked out how to handle that knowledge once it had come to him, but he did know that he was never going to be able to repay Nix for it. How do you give a man your life—your sanity?

"Hey," he said in a low voice, reaching across to twine his fingers through Nix's hair. "Pretty sure our rooms are the only two on this floor."

"Who could have arranged that!" Nix commented, voice muffled against his legs. He groped for Dick's wrist and squeezed it. "You planning to take advantage of it?"

Despite the day he'd had, Dick smiled and dug his nails lightly into Nix's scalp. "What if I am?"

Nix didn't answer, but unfolded his body and reached for Dick's face. He cupped the side of Dick's jaw and ran his thumb along Dick's cheekbone. "How's your head?" he asked.

Dick turned into the hand, kissing the heel of it, then the palm, looking up at Nix through his lashes. "Not going to slow me down," he said. "I've been thinking about this for months." Years, but he hadn't admitted that yet, and wasn't sure he ever would. What mattered was that they had a locked door and a quiet night for the first time since Paris, and there wasn't anything Dick couldn't do right now.

He leaned over and kissed Nix, catching the corner of his mouth and bumping his nose into Nix's, making him laugh and grab the sides of Dick's face to sort the angle out. He held Dick's face away from his until he could half turn and then tilted his head and leaned in to kiss Dick slowly.

It started gently, with Nix's lips just brushing his, then deepened as he felt Nix's tongue on his lower lip, just barely touching it. When Dick parted his lips and tried to lean in, Nix held his face steady and refused to be hurried. He tilted Dick's head a little more and sucked at his lip, paused with their faces almost touching, and deliberately bumped his nose into Dick's. They were too close to watch each other, but Dick got the blurry impression of a smile under Nix's soft black beard. When Dick smiled back, tentative and caught between the shock of how much he wanted this and the shock of actually getting it, Nix's smile widened into a gleam of teeth, and he bit Dick's lower lip where he'd first licked it—just hard enough to sting and make Dick pull in a small, sharp breath.

"Someday," Nix promised, "I'm going to fine a place with a big bed far away from everything, and I'm going to spend days finding out what sounds you make when I touch you."

"Do it now," Dick said, reckless with both lust and an abiding need to never let Nix stop kissing him.

"Oh, I wish," Nix said, his lips were still just short of touching Dick's and his dark lashes cast shadows on his cheeks. Dick wanted to memorise every detail, and to kissing it.

He also wanted to be wearing fewer clothes than he was. Nix was on top of that before he could finish the thought, undoing each of Dick's buttons with a tiny flourish, while kissing Dick's cheek and the corner of his jaw, and the edge of his ear. His lips were soft against Dick's stubble, and his breath tickled it through, making Dick shiver.

When he had Dick's shirt open, he ran his fingers up under the undershirt, frowning as his hand found the contour of Dick's ribs. "You've got to stop skipping chow," he said. 

"Now is not the time to start sounding like my mother," Dick grumbled. He got the top two button's open on Nix's shirt, and then just hauled the whole thing off over Nix's head, undershirt and all.

"Right, sorry." Nix pushed Dick onto the floor and kissed his neck and then his collarbone and then his chest, pulling him out of his shirt as he went. He ran his hands down Dick's sides rising goose bumps as he went. Dick held onto his shoulders, loving how warm and solid he felt. He'd spent so many nights shivering shoulder to shoulder, wearing every scrap of clothing they owned, and holding onto memories of seeing Nix's pale skin in the lamplight. Now he was here, and Dick could touch whatever he liked, for as long as he liked.

Nix bent to kiss him again as he tugged at Dick's belt buckle, and Dick let his head fall back and massaged Nix's shoulders, letting the little moans of pleasure that caused reverberate through both of their chests. Nix finally got his belt and fly open, and Dick arched up so that Nix could pull his pants off. He was already breathing hard, but it was Nix who stopped and rested his forehead on Dick's for a moment, holding both steady with hands spread across Dick's hipbones.

"We gotta slow down," he panted. "My balls are so blue, I'm not going to get my pants off."

"Or we could speed up," Dick suggested. He looped his arms around to grab Nix's ass and pull down while he ground up against Nix, their cocks rubbing against each other through Nix's pants. Dick didn't want to wait a minute longer, but Nix rolled off him, laughing.

"Jesus, Dick, these are my only ODs," he protested, stripping out of them, until he was sitting bare assed on the floor in just his socks and dog tags. He looked beautiful and ridiculous, and Dick loved him for both. "That's better." He crawled back over to sit astride Dick's thighs, and took Dick's hand in both of his. His eyes were dark and suddenly sincere, and he watched Dick's face over their hands as he kissed Dick's knuckles.

Dick shifted under him, trying to thrust up and rub their cocks together, but Nix was too heavy. Instead he pulled his hand down and twisted out of Nix's grip so that he could grip both their cocks together. Nix closed both his hands over top of Dick's, twining their fingers. The roughness of their callouses against the smooth hard skin of his cock almost made Dick come right there. Watching Nix's face, he could see him sucking in his cheeks and concentrating on holding on.

Now when Dick lifted his hips, their cocks slid together through their joined hands, the spike of pleasure taking his breath away, building and building every time either of them moved. Every breath Nix drew in sent a shiver of sensation through both of them, and Dick rolled his head back and bit his lip to keep from crying out.

Nix came hard on that, chest rising and falling with short shallow breaths as a high whine escaped his throat. His eyes never left Dick's, and his hands loosely caressed his come across both their cocks, making them slide easily together. The lazy, smooth pull drew Dick out, and up to the edge, but he refused to let it be over so quickly. His whole body built into the rush of lust and Nix's fingers laced with his, but he pulled in breath after deep breath and rode it like an air current. His hips rocked on their own now, pushing him up against Nix, and all he wanted to do was get closer.

"Time to go," Nix whispered, and slid his thumb all the way down Dick's cock and pressed on the spot between his balls. The little bit of pain pushed Dick right over. Hot release rolled through him, and writhed under Nix, jerking incoherently up against him until he was completely spent. "Christ, I love watching that," Nix said. "The look on your face when you come apart..." he bent and kissed Dick sloppily and then pulled away grinning. "We need to do this more often."

"We need to be careful," Dick said, but he couldn't really argue. Each time Nix touched him, it just felt too good to think of giving up. He reached up to grab the back of Nix's neck, pulling him in for another kiss.

"Yeah," Nix said, their lips just touching. "Very, very careful. Got it."

* * *

Dick didn't see a lot of Nix the next day either. Normally it would have amused him how swiftly the regiment's S3 could shift from seeing his duties as closely liaising with the battalion heads—2nd Battalion's especially—to mostly needing to personally reconnoitre the river bank half way to Strasbourg, but the memory of the tightness around his eyes when he'd talked about Muldoon drained the humour out of the situation. Dick felt a flush of retrospective affection for Strayer every time he half turned to say something to Nix only to find Zielinski at his elbow instead.

The last time he did this was in the little office Dick had been downgraded to on Muldoon's arrival. He'd been about to comment on something Speirs had said to Luz, but realised that it wasn't fit for the mixed company of Zielinski and his CO, and closed is mouth instead. Leaning in the doorway, Muldoon seemed to catch both the look and the shift in Dick's expression. He tilted his head slightly and told Zielinski to see what he could find for coffee.

"Col. Sink tells me that you and Lewie were at Toccoa together," Muldoon commented, not leaving the doorway. It was almost twenty four hours since Muldoon had rode into Haguenau, and this was the first time since that he'd mentioned Nix at all.

Dick hesitated. There didn't seem to be much in the way of sure footing on this pathway. "Yes, sir. We were," he said and left it at that.

"Hmm," Muldoon replied, and Dick would have given his next pass to know what that implied, but he sure wasn't planning to ask. He kept his expression blank, and waited. "I know his family," Muldoon said at last. "He had an adventurous youth, at Yale, especially."

Sensing the path narrowing further still, Dick just nodded. He felt torn between wanting Muldoon to keep talking—to betray any potential angle of attack—and needing to shut down implied criticism of his best friend before it could gain the strength of silent complicity. The weight of the latter grew as the silence continued, until Dick said carefully, "Lewis Nixon is an exemplary officer, sir. And a good friend."

Muldoon smiled, eyes crinkling, and in that moment he looked nothing other than kindly and avuncular. It was the kind of face that Dick knew he was meant to trust, but Nix's words caught at his memory: _Everyone believes him._. So when Muldoon said, "I'm glad to hear that, son." 

Dick nodded again, and didn't believe him.

* * *

It was almost 2300 by the time Dick got back to his billet, and he was wiped out. There'd been shelling from across the river all day, and the constant state of alertness rasped on his nerves. The headache left over from the bomb blast came and went, especially with exertion, and Dick just wanted to sink into hot, soapy water and sleep for three hundred years.

Finding Nix slouched across Dick's bed with his booted feet dangling off the side, arm over his eyes as he either dozed or tried to soothed Dick's soul in about the same way as a bath would have. He shut and locked the door before starting to strip down, saying, "Feels like I haven't seen you in a year."

Nix grunted, then raised his arm enough to peer at Dick. "Avoiding Chet," was all he said, emphasising the name like one would say _viper_. Dick's interest in their history had not been decreased by his earlier conversation with Muldoon, but he knew that if Nix wanted to tell him, he'd get to it in his own time.

"I still missed you," Dick said. He unbuttoned his shirt and shrugged out of it, then dragged his undershirt over his head. "Couldn't stop thinking about you, about doing this." He crawled across the bed until he was kneeling astride Nix's hips, hands planted on his shoulders, then he leaned in and kissed him.

For a moment, Nix lay quiescent below him, not responding, but then he looped his raised arm around Dick's neck and pulled him in. He opened his mouth, and let Dick run his tongue along the inside of his lip, tasting whiskey, and loving the sharp edge of Nix's teeth. Dick changed the angle so that he could kiss deeper, wanting to feel everything all at once and forget the day. Nix's hands dragged through his hair, pulling hard enough to sting, and Dick rocked his hips down unconsciously and dug his fingers into Nix's upper arms. He closed his eyes against the lamplight, and imagined they were somewhere far away from the German army, somewhere safe, and he could to whatever he liked with Nix for as long as he wanted.

"I needed this," Nix murmured, nuzzling his ear as he ran his nails down Dick's spine. "You have no idea how much."

Dick bit the his earlobe to get him to shut up, and when that didn't work kissed him again.

"I'll show you," Nix said, and out from under Dick, then slid off the bed until he was kneeling between Dick's legs, a hand on each of Dick's knees, spreading them apart. Dick lifted his hips so that Nix could strip him, and then leaned up on his elbows to watch as Nix fussed with his bootlaces and pulled his remaining clothes into a heap on the floor.

He'd needed this just as much as Nix had. He'd needed it since the moment he laid eyes on Nix at Fort Benning, for every day of the two years they'd spent circling each other, and every step of their advance across Europe, all the way to that night in Paris. Now that he had it, that he had Nix's hands running up the insides of his thighs, Nix's breath hot on his hardening cock—Dick knew that he could never give it up. The months on the line had been hard enough—when they could touch, but nothing more, not so close to the men—but knowing that if they made it through that they'd have a locked door and a safe place to be together—to have this—had made it bearable.

Nix licked from the base of his cock to the tip, sending a spear of lust through Dick. He dug his hands into the sheets and bit his lip to keep from crying out. He knew they had to keep quiet, even here, but never had noise discipline been harder, with Nix trying his best to take him apart. Nix's nails scratched down the insides of his thighs at the same time as he ran his tongue right around the head of his cock, and the soft-sharp sensations tore a gasp out of Dick. He panted hard and squeezed his eyes shut to regain control, because seeing the dark hair against his pale skin now would make him lose it, and he needed this to last. "Yeah, Lew," he whispered, and Nix hummed and swallowed his cock.

The key rattled in the latch, and Dick only had a frantic half second to shove Nix off him and try to get to his feet. Dick tripped over his boots and he fell forward on the floor just as Nix crab walked back away from him. Winded Dick stared at the muddy paratrooper boot in front of them, then up long legs to the scowling face of Lt. Col. Muldoon.

"I see I have the wrong room," he commented, but he stepped in and closed the door behind him.

"Col. Muldoon, sir," Nix started to say, as Dick was pushing himself up to his knees.

"Stay where you are, Captains," Muldoon snapped. He stepped back so that he stood with his back to the door, blocking any hope of escape. Dick's brain kicked back into gear just then, and he opened his mouth to say... something, he didn't know what. Something that would save Nix. "Sir—" he started, but Muldoon cut him off.

"You will stay where you are until I am finished with you. Understand?"

Dick swallowed and dipped his head. Nix at least was dressed, but with Dick down to his dog tags, and with the position they'd been in when Muldoon had come in, Dick couldn't see a way to get them clear of this. Not unless Muldoon was a lot more forgiving than Nix had led him to believe.

That hope was crushed when Muldoon turned to Nix, ignoring for the moment Dick kneeling by the foot of the bed. "I see you continue to be a disappointment," he snapped, and for once Nix didn't have a smart reply about the Nixons of Nixon, New Jersey. He sat on the floor, staring straight ahead, eyes fixed on a patch of wall two feet in front of Dick, expression still as a death mask. "Report to the Regimental HQ at once, and stay there until you are relieved. I will be asking Lt. McLaren what time you arrived. If I don't like the answer, I will be talking to the MPs, about everything."

Nix's face was almost white, and Dick could hear he a shake in his breathing, but he didn't know if it was from fury or terror. Still, he spoke more or less evenly when he ask, "What about Capt. Winters?"

"I wish to discuss your situation with, Capt. Winters." Muldoon's tone implied that Nix should let the adults do the talking, and predictably, Nix started to rise to the bait.

Dick closed his eyes. They couldn't do this. "Nix!" he snapped, "you were given an order. Go!"

That got Nix to his feet, but then he froze again, staring wide-eyed at first Dick then Muldoon. Something on Dick's face must have broken though, because he nodded and snapped off a, "Yes, sir!"

Muldoon watched his face for a moment before stepping away from the door and letting Nix slide out through it.

The latch clicked behind Nix like the gates of hell closing.

Dick wished he'd been the one pushing his partner onto the bed. Then he could plausibly claim to have forced himself on Nix, and maybe take all the heat somehow. As it was, their relationship had been obvious, and he now feared it had been obvious all along. "You didn't accidentally open the wrong door, did you, sir?" he asked.

Muldoon snorted. "Smart boy," was all he said before lapsing into one of his unnerving silences.

Dick realised he was shaking, from shock more than cold, and his knees hurt, but he didn't move. For once his mind was blank, and no strategy, no exit plan came to him. All he could do was wait and hope for mercy.

"Do you know what they United States Army does to recidivist inverts?" Muldoon asked eventually. Dick realised he was being sweated, but that didn't reduce the effectiveness of the ploy.

"They are dishonourably discharged, sir," he said. With a blue discharge, finding work, getting a bank loan, going to school, or any other post-army tasks would become next to impossible.

Muldoon shook his head. "That is what will happen to you, with your nearly clean record and Col. Sink to protect you. What do you think will happen to Lewie Nixon?"

Dick shook his head. "Sir, Captain Nixon is—" he started, but Muldoon raised a hand to silence him.

"Don't give me that two stars on his jumpwings guff," he growled. "You know as well as I do that your friend has a talent for drinking on duty and being exactly where the fighting is coolest, and the whole regiment knows it too. As for recidivism, I think the disciplinary board would be very interested to hear from a character witness of my rank and experience, one who was familiar with his behaviour at Yale."

Nix had mentioned other men, in the past, but Dick knew that it didn't even have to be true. Whatever court martial they faced would listen to Muldoon, especially when he came with salacious tales and family connections. "He'll go to prison," Dick said, and he knew that that would be the same as lining Nix up against a wall and shooting him. Prison would just be slower.

"A special prison, where the head shrinkers try to figure out what's wrong with him and all the other sexual psychopaths they lock him up with," Muldoon agreed. "I would hate to be the one to tell his daddy why that was, or for word of it to get out in his home town, but you understand how a secret like that would be hard to keep."

 _It'll get around anyway,_ Nix had said. _Everyone knows what Chet thinks. Everyone believes him._

But Muldoon was opening the door a crack, just with his words; he was showing Dick that there could be a way out. If he wasn't, why were they still here, and not with the MPs? "I would hate that too, sir," Dick said, and tried not to let himself hope, though what hope there was in being blackmailed, he didn't know.

Muldoon dropped to a crouch in front of Dick and met his eyes. "I'm glad we agree, son," he said, and smiled. It was same kindly smile from before, but this time Dick saw the shark behind it even more clearly.

Dick's mouth was so dry that he had to clear his throat before he could ask, "Is there anything I could do to prevent that from happening, sir?"

He sent nearly all his pay home, and he wouldn't engage in graft, or do anything that reduced the circumstances of his men, but there had to be an offer within in there somewhere. If there wasn't, Muldoon wouldn't be asking.

Muldoon took hold of Dick's chin, tipping his face first one way and then another as he studied him. "I see Lewie still has good taste," he said, almost as if to himself.

Dick's stomach was sinking faster than his mind could run, and his gut knew what was coming even as he asked, "What do you want from me, sir?"

The silence that followed drew out so long that Dick started back when Muldoon stood abruptly. "Col. Strayer is expected to be fit for duty in ten days, at which time I will return to the 17th. Until then, I expect you to report to my billet at 2130 on the nose, and once there you will do whatever I ask of you, without complaint. An exception will be made for emergency situations that call both of us to the line."

The room seemed to be dimming, and for a moment Dick wondered if something had happened to the generators, but no, this was the same feeling as four days before, getting his bell rung by German bomb: shell shock. Dick swallowed and squared his shoulders. He knew exactly what Muldoon was asking of him, and he also knew the consequences of refusing him. "Yes, sir," he said. "And Capt. Nixon?"

Muldoon reached down and actually patted his head, smoothing the hair that Nix had ruffled not so long ago. "I expect Lewie will not need to know. You may tell him whatever strikes you as plausible." Meaning he expected Dick to lie for him. No problem there. Dick nodded, and relaxed a hair. Whatever happened to him, he could keep Nix was clear of it. "Additionally," Muldoon snapped, "I don't expect to share your time with another officer. Do you understand?"

Dick nodded again. No telling Nix, no sex with Nix, not that that seemed likely after this. "Will that be all, sir?"

"Yes, Captain." Hand still in Dick's hair, Muldoon stepped forward until the front of his pants brushed Dick's nose. "A demonstration, if you please."

"Sir," Dick said. Nix had always accused him of being too straight forward, and maybe that was true, but Muldoon was speaking clearly enough, for all that he hadn't said anything outright. Even R. D. Winters, quasi-Mennonite teetotaller from rural Pennsylvania could understand this. He'd just thought he'd have had a little time to prepare himself.

Dick took a deep breath, and then reached up to unbutton Muldoon's fly. He had to clench his hands into fists for a moment to get them to stop shaking before he worked at the belt and buttons. When he got the fly open and pulled aside the briefs, Muldoon was already half hard underneath. Dick stared at the cock, at the pale skin rising out of the olive drab fabric, the way it curved up, the bunch of skin around the head, and the faint lines of veins. It was bigger than Nix's, and Dick knew he wouldn't be able to swallow very much of it.

Dick touched it with the backs of his fingers, then made himself act decisively and wrapped his hand around the base. As his hands worked the delicate skin over Muldoon's cock, Dick had to force himself not to think of Nix. He'd never touched another man before Paris, and this felt as familiar as it did wrong, the sense memories tied to something that had given him so much happiness before. If he closed his eyes, he could probably pretend that this was something else, something he wanted, and that might make it easier. Then he could let his body move on instinct, like he was assembling an M1, and keep his mind free of the humiliation of his position. But he couldn't do that to Nix. Dick couldn't put his best friend's face on this.

Muldoon's hand pulled Dick in, pressure light, signal clear. Dick licked his lips before closing them around the tip of the cock in front of him, and tried not to hear the deep grunt of satisfaction Muldoon made in response. Dick could feel Muldoon's pulse speeding up though the veins against his tongue, and when he sucked lightly, Muldoon's body twitched under him. Forcing his mind away from the times he'd done this with Nix, Dick balanced himself with one hand on Muldoon's thighs and kept the other closed the other around the base of his cock. He knew that the scrap of his callouses set against the softness of his tongue, the warmth of his mouth against the chill of his fingers would hit hard, and he wanted to get this over with.

The fingers in Dick's hair dug deeper, and Dick let Muldoon pull him down until his cock filled Dick's mouth to the choking point. His jaw already ached from the stretch and sustained position, and Muldoon had stopped moving, holding him in place while Dick shuddered and panted and struggled not to retch. That was okay. Nix would never do this to him, and Dick wanted to feel different. He wanted this memory to have as little to do with that handful of memories of Nix as he could. It would be over between them after this, he thought, but he wanted to hold onto the something.

Dick swirled his tongue along the bottom of Muldoon's cock, and tightened his lips to fight back the nausea. Muldoon started to rock his hips, grunting softly with each thrust, and Dick closed his eyes and sucked as steadily as he could with his breath catching.

He was starting to choke in earnest, but he could feel Muldoon's body pulling tight, and the room filled with the sound of his short, panting breaths. Dick held on, eyes screwed shut, and took each thrust as it came, his mind running in small and smaller circles that mixed prayers that this would be over soon with a growing hope that he would suffocate. 

Muldoon came hard, yanking at Dick's hair, and holding his head steadily as he jerked forward in tiny, ragged shoves, each one spurting semen across Dick's tongue, filling his mouth. Dick tried to swallow, but it lacked out of the corner of his mouth, and he felt it slide down his chin and then drip onto his chest. He let his hands fall and kept his eyes closed, waiting for Muldoon to finish.

He didn't finish. Even when his cock was soft and spent, Muldoon kept his hold on Dick's hair. He waited, unmoving, until Dick opened his eyes and looked up. "Next time, son," Muldoon said, voice a hair rougher than before, but otherwise unruffled, "I expect you to keep your eyes open unless I tell you otherwise." Then he stepped back, withdrawing from Dick's mouth. Again he took Dick's chin and tilted his face to study him. Whatever he saw made him smile. "I will see you at 2130 tomorrow," he said, and wiped his hand on Dick's shoulder, smearing semen across his skin.

"Yes, sir," Dick replied said, voice too small and choked sounding, but Dick didn't break eye contact until Muldoon was finished closing his pants and was stepping out of the door.

When he was gone, Dick folded in on himself until his forehead touched the floor and his arms covered his head and neck, and knelt there not thinking for some time. He didn't know what to do now. What could he possibly do? He wanted Nix, but Nix was the one person in the world he couldn't go to right now, and every one else...

Dick realised he was shaking so badly that his head was knocking on the floor and he made himself sit up and pull the wool blanket off the bed to wrap around his shoulders.

He needed to pull himself together. Nix's life was on the line, and possibly those of his men as well. He needed to keep close to Muldoon, to make sure that he was never alone with any of the men, especially Nix. Dick needed to be able to make sure that he was in fighting shape in case the Germans tried to cross the Moder River. There would be assignments, and defences, and patrols, and maybe even an advance into German-held territory, or a jump onto it, and Dick didn't trust Muldoon with any of it, not any more. He would have to check everything, and to check everything, he had to stand up and face the next day, and the day after that.

He made himself get up and go over to the wash stand to rinse his mouth and wipe his face and chest. He dressed in his uniform save for his boots and curled on the bed—blanket again wrapped tightly around him—and tried to sleep.


	2. Chapter 2

He dreamed of Lew. He was stretched out on his back on the long hillside that sloped down to the pond near Dick's parents house. He was naked except for his sunglasses. He wasn't even wearing his dog tags, without which Dick had never seen him. Dick wasn't there in the dream, just Lew lying in long grass that cast shadows across his skin. He was safe and warm in the sunshine. He looked happy.

Dick woke up feeling an aching sadness that momentarily closed his throat so tightly that he had to swallow hard before he could breathe. His jaw still felt a little stiff, and his throat was raw. He rubbed his hands over his eyes and rolled to his feet.

His watch told him it was a few hours until dawn, and half an hour before he usually went on duty. He liked to walk the line and check in with the night watches before Zielinski came on duty to bury his desk in reports.

Dick almost left without shaving, but he caught himself at the last moment. He'd promised himself the night before that he'd look after his men. What would they think if their Captain—who'd shaved every morning in zero degrees in the middle of the worst fighting of the war—showed up with a two-day beard? They'd look at him like they'd looked at Buck, and that would scare the hell out of all of them.

He shaved as quickly as he could, focusing on the slide of metal across his skin and avoiding looking himself in the eye. Then he realised what he was doing, and made himself look, taking his jaw between his thumb and forefinger and turning his head back and forth. What was it a man like Muldoon saw in him? He couldn't hold his own stare for long, but it was long enough to realise that he looked like hell. His skin had a grey tinge, and smudgy dark circles pooled under his eyes. He'd looked better walking out of Bastonge than he did now—almost a week of warm beds and good chow later. Well, it was still dark. Coffee and food would freshen him up, if he could get his stomach to settle long enough to eat it.

He'd have to find Nix first, he realised, before they both crawled out of their skins. Dick also needed to make sure that Muldoon had kept his promise and left Nix out of it. Nix might be the more practised liar, but Dick thought he'd be able to tell if Muldoon had gone to Nix after he'd left Dick's billet. Dick's mind filled with a too-vivid image of Nix on his knees, Muldoon's hand in his hair. Dick would do anything, endure anything, to keep that from happening.

He needed to work out what he was going to say. He had to make sure he found out if anything had happened to Nix without hinting at the deal he'd made, and all he wanted to do was curl in on his shame and not talk to anyone again. The idea of even Nix knowing was unendurable.

Dick didn't have much chance to work on his script. Nix was already at the Easy CP, talking to Speirs about the river. He caught Dick's eye as he came in and jerked his head towards the door. "I'll show Dick," he said by way of explanation, and Dick followed him back out into the dark streets of Haguenau. They didn't turn down toward the river though, but picked through some rubble and into a bombed-out church.

"Is something going on with Easy?" Dick asked automatically, following him through the ruins to a largely intact door. Nix didn't say anything, just pulled it open.

They were in a small room that had been the base of the bell tower with the door closed, before Nix struck a match. The room barely had enough room for the two of them to stand, and most of it was taken up with charred wooden stairs. It smelled of of burned wood and damp stone, like it'd been empty a long time. Dick tried not to think of an earlier bell tower, when he and Nix had climbed to reconnoitre a German advance in Holland, and come tumbling down laughing when a sniper had started pinging rounds off the bell. He missed Nix's laugh .

"Easy's fine," Nix said. "You'd get the real briefing same time as Sink." He list first a candle and then his cigarette before shaking the match out. Dick noticed that he'd shaved, and wondered what that meant. "I need to talk to you about last night."

"Did you see Muldoon?" Dick asked. He studied Nix's face as the light of the cigarette flared. He looked tired and unhappy, but not damaged. Not like the reflection Dick had stared into this morning. Suddenly keeping this secret seemed hopeless. Surely everyone could just look at him and tell.

But Nix just shook his head. "No. I stayed at HQ like a good boy until he sent a runner telling me to stand down. That was about an hour ago." He didn't sound too sure on that, but he couldn't have gotten much sleep. Dick didn't think it was an act; there was none of that unsure flick of the eyes to check Dick's reaction that he had when he was winding up for a real whopper. Dick let out a small relieved sigh, just a puff of breath, and Nix raised an eyebrow. Dick still didn't know what to say. The silence filled up the space between them, like someone was pumping air into a room to up the pressure. Finally, Nix snapped, "Dammit, Dick. I should never have left you there. What the hell happened?"

They were standing too close, not a hairsbreadth away, and Dick stepped back. He'd never be able to say this if he could feel Nix's breath on his cheek. The door felt solid against his shoulder blades, and he inhaled a lungful of stale air and cigarette smoke. Then he thought of what Nix would think of him if he knew what Dick had done—how he'd let himself be used like a thing—and it hardened his resolve. "I promised him we were done," he said.

"Fuck." Nix closed his eyes briefly, then looked back up at Dick. "And?"

Dick didn't know what else to say, that was the one bit of truth he'd had to tell. "He chewed me out. This man's army. My career. Your career. The battalion."

"And?" Nix, it seemed, knew Lt. Col. Muldoon too well for an easy snowjob to stick.

The key to lying, Dick had heard, was simplicity and conviction. He had the latter, at least. He had to convince Nix to stay away from this whole mess, and most of all to stay away from Dick. "And nothing. He said he'd be watching us, and made me promise that this was the end of it. Think he didn't see any point trying to tell you anything."

Nix gave him a long, sceptical look, then shook his head slightly. Dick wasn't convincing him, and he needed to. He needed to say something that would make Nix back off instead of worrying away at the question, or, so help Dick, investigating it. He would push and push and push, and Dick couldn't handle fending him off right now and he couldn't handle telling him the truth. He needed to make it utterly sure that Nix didn't compare stories with Muldoon.

"And he told me about the trouble you got into at Yale... or didn't get into." That was a shot in the dark, a guess based on half mentioned details, but from the way Nix flinched back, it had struck true. Dick followed it with a kill shot, merciless in his desperation. "I, uh, guess you're not the man I thought you were. My mistake. Actually, I figure this whole thing between us has been a mistake. I know better now." Now he was overplaying his hand, but he made himself look Nix right in the eye, and thanked Christ Jesus for those years under Sobel and the mask they'd taught him.

"Dick..." Nix started to say, but he sounded like he'd landed a jump badly and had the wind knocked out of him. His face was white even in the candlelight. The cigarette had burned down almost to his fingers, and now dropped from his hand, but Dick didn't think he noticed the sparks fall. Finally, Nix pulled himself together enough to ask, "So you believe Muldoon?"

Dick made himself shrug and say, "It sounded like you." Then he turned away and fumbled with the door until he got it open, letting in the thin grey light of dawn. "I'll see you around, Nixon," he called over his shoulder.

He didn't look back until he was a block away, but when he did, Nix was still standing in what had been the narthex of the ruined church, hunched over another cigarette. Dick turned down towards the OPs on the river, and tried not to think about what he'd just said, and what it might have meant to Nix.

* * *

Muldoon was waiting for him outside his office. Dick tried to read his expression, but it was as placidly neutral as Dick's own must be. They'd both come out of the same school in that regard.

"Sir," Dick said as he saluted.

He'd been wondering if Muldoon was going to make a sport out of the power he had over Dick, or try to humiliate him in front of the men, but he just asked what the reports from the OPs were and if any of the night's shelling had done significant damage. They were exactly the same questions he'd asked the previous morning, in exactly the same tone.

Dick did his best to fill him in, helped by the fact that it had been an unremarkable night, but he couldn't look at Muldoon without seeing the cat-with-cream expression that he'd worn the moment Dick had looked up from the floor. He couldn't scrub away the knowledge of what it felt like to kneel on bare wood with the man's limp cock in his mouth, praying for it to be over soon.

Despite the idiocies and indignities of the US Army, despite being in a shooting war that kept killing the boys Dick would have given his life to protect, Dick had never truly hated someone until that staff meeting on a quiet morning in Haguenau. He hadn't even hated Sobel this much, not at his cruellest; Dick's antipathy for Sobel had always been run through with a strand of pity. And at least Sobel had been valuable practice when it came to controlling his emotions. Dick kept his expression still and smooth as he listened to Muldoon's orders for rotations on the OPs and possible patrols.

This was like listening to Sobel plan an exercise, he told himself. He was getting information from an unreliable source, but one that he couldn't afford tip off, how would he verify it?

Normally his answer would have been to go to Nix, but he couldn't now, and the battalion had never back filled the S2 when Nix moved to regiment. Harry was gone, thank Christ, and Dick didn't want to lay something this intangible and dangerous on the noncoms.

Dick went to Speirs. He was down by the river, seeming to wish he could freeze it solid enough to run the regiment over just with his stare. He turned on Dick with eyes narrowed in annoyance, but his expression eased when he saw who it was. He didn't bother to salute, and didn't move when Dick crossed to stand beside him and look at the swiftly-flowing grey water.

"You need something?" he asked, when Dick took to long to work out exactly how to ask for help.

"Yes and no," Dick said. He didn't for a moment suspect that Speirs would go over his head, to Muldoon or Sink. However, he also wanted the man to be able to in all honesty say he had no idea about whatever conspiracy or treason charges might head Dick's way if he fouled this up any worse than it already was. "Nothing's wrong. I wanted to verify your orders from battalion, make sure everything's clear."

"Seemed clear enough, sir," Speirs commented, he was frowning, confused, beginning to get annoyed. Dick was making it worse.

"I'm sure I'm just being a mother hen," he said, and tried to smile, but he could tell it didn't look right. "Not used to having someone else run the battalion."

Speirs narrowed his eyes and sighed faintly. "You want me to verify everything with you?" he asked.

Yes, Dick definitely wanted him to do that, also everything that was going on with the other companies. "No," he said, "I just, uh, want a heads up if anything seems off."

"Off." Speirs stated. He didn't make it a question, but Dick knew that he was doing more harm than good, and tried again.

"Use your best judgement, Ron," he said, "And, uh, you should be careful around the lieutenant colonel. He can be a bit of an iron tail. Tell the men. Quietly." He wanted to tell the men not to be alone with Muldoon, either, but he couldn't think of a way to it without blowing the whole thing open.

Speirs didn't look much more enlightened, but he nodded and said, "Will do, sir."

"Thank you," Dick said with a sigh. He'd have to worry about word about an overbearing commander making its way though all the companies. Dick had just held a match to dry grass. He'd have a similar word with Capt. McMillan over in Dog, but he didn't know the leader of Fox well enough to sound them out like this. Hell, he was taking a risk with Speirs. He hesitated, thinking of all the stories Speirs let swirl around him—about his ruthless confidence and how much the men now loved him—and wondered if he should say something else. Then he shook his head, patted Speirs on the shoulder and told him to carry on before he trudged back up to the town.

He hardly noticed the shell that landed a block away, not until a bit of stone pinged off his helmet with all the force of a pebble lobbed at a girl's window. He shook his head and continued on up the road. He would have to be more careful. Second Battalion was relying on him to keep them safe, in more ways than they knew.

* * *

Dick didn't see Nix in the mess, or much at all for the rest of the day. Zielinski mentioned, unprompted, that Capt. Nixon had gone with a scouting trip up river, and wasn't expected back until after chow time. "That's good," Dick said absently before he remembered himself, then on Zielinski's questioning look, added, "We need to find a way across this river, or we'll be here all winter." Though honestly that would suit him just fine. He was hoping that they'd be pulled off the line before the advance. His men had done enough.

He'd meant to send a runner to take the day's inventory reports to Regiment, but the regiment's assistant S4 showed up looking for them just as he was signing off.

"Got to keep on top of these," Lt. Davidson said. "Oh, did you hear? We're getting winter uniforms, boot packs, all that."

That made Dick smile. "When?"

"In the next day or so. Whenever supply works out where we are. Just in time, huh?" He sorted Dick's paperwork into his satchel, before looking up. "Oh, the other reason I came by. Your billet's been moved. You're over with battalion staff now, what there is of it. Your footlocker's there already. I'll leave the directions with your orderly."

It took Dick a second to work though that one, so he blinked and said something vague. Then he realised that would leave Nix by himself. "Who got my room?" he asked.

"I did, as it turns out," Davidson told him.

Dick nodded. That would be all right. Davidson got along with everyone, even Nix when he was in a sulk. "Sorry you had to move, Paul," he said.

Davidson laughed. "I'm used to it. I'll tell Capt. Nixon where you've gone, shall I?"

"Yeah, thanks." Dick knew exactly what Nix would think when he heard that Dick had swapped rooms to move nearer to Muldoon, and the idea twisted his gut hard enough that he had to take a swallow of coffee to hide his expression. Fortunately Davidson was busy enough that he just nodded and headed back to Regimental HQ.

Dick checked that the door was closed and Zielinski safely away from the window and then sunk his face in his hands, digging the heels of his palms into his eyes. He rested there for a moment, focusing on the pain of it before lifting his head and blinking his vision clear.

This would be better. He'd be on the other side of town from Nix, and the chances of running into him, or of Nix attempting some kind of end run interference were smaller. Nix would doubtless assume that Dick's move was proof that he was siding with Muldoon against him, and that made it unlikely that he would ever speak to Dick again. He would, however, be safe, clear away from Muldoon, and avoiding both of them as best he could. That was all Dick could ask for until Strayer returned.

After that, Dick didn't know what he would do. If he got himself and his men through the next ten days, he'd have to pray to God for absolution and carry on alone as best he could. He couldn't see Nix offering any kind of forgiveness without explanation, and Dick couldn't see explaining, either. He knew already that he'd never be able to explain to Nix what Muldoon had done—and was doing—to him. Every time he begun to imagine telling his best friend about passively kneeling on the floor while Muldoon pumped into his mouth, Dick's throat tightened, and the air seemed to thin around him. He knew that Nix couldn't suspect. If he had, he never would have left Dick alone the night before.

What had happened at Yale? Well, he couldn't ask Nix now, and he wouldn't ask Muldoon.

Glancing at his watch, Dick realised it was almost chow time. He'd gathered cobwebs half the afternoon. He should check in on the men. They were all still strung too tight after Belgium, and seeing Dick as their constant seemed to settle them a little. It should be safe. He imagined Nix was having a liquid dinner elsewhere, and his gut twisted again at the thought. He hoped Harry would be back soon, for Nix, even if the man was too observant for his own good, and Dick would have to find a way to put him off too. When had Dick become such a coward? Maybe this was how Sobel felt, again and again coming against the knowledge that he wasn't the man he wanted to be.

Walking through the mess, Dick saw huddles of men all looking like hell barely warmed over. Malarkey especially had a haunted look that made Dick want to wrap him in blankets, put him in a crate marked _fragile_ , and ship him States side. Dick sat next to Speirs, who was still looking at him oddly, and listened to the pitch of the conversation. It wasn't happy. They didn't see why they were on the line again. They didn't see why they weren't crossing the river. They wanted R&R. They wanted to jump into Berlin. Dick could feel the tension building again, and he wondered who it would take if it snapped this time.

When he'd cleared his plate, he clapped Speirs on the shoulder and leaned down to say, "Take care of them."

"Yes, sir," Speirs answered, and from the look in his eyes, he knew exactly what Dick meant.

Dick toured the OPs again as the setting sun shot its final rays through a gap in the clouds. The evening light cast long shadows across the river and the fields on the far side, and likely blinded the enemy guns, temporarily silencing them, same as the sunrise would hit 2nd Battalion's artillery. The men along the riverbank were as restless as the ones in the mess.

In addition to hating Lt. Col. Muldoon, Dick decided that he hated Haguenau.

* * *

After dinner, came a slow, painful wind up to his appointment with Muldoon. As he found his new billet—what had clearly once been a maid's room on the bottom floor of a narrow row house in the newer part of town—Dick wondered what would happen if he just didn't show up. MPs, probably, the end of their careers and Nix's whole life. That would leave Muldoon over the battalion, and only the company commanders to protect the men from a threat they didn't understand.

Dick worked through the time by reading a field manual about infantry operations in snow and extreme cold. Much of the information was already badly dated, and some of it was flat out wrong, and Dick found himself scribbling marginalia as he read. It kept his mind occupied until his time was up.

This time when Dick shaved, he met his own eyes so constantly that his reflection started to blur. Whatever happened, he knew for whom he was doing this. He put his shaving kit away, lining everything up in the tray on top of his footlocker, before leaving his room and locking the door behind him.

Muldoon's billets were the two family rooms above Dick's. Apparently lieutenant colonels rated a sitting room as well as a bedroom. Dick knocked on the door at 2130 exactly, and entered when told to.

He'd spent the day telling himself that it didn't matter what Muldoon did to him—that he was protecting his men, that he had no choice—but at the click of the latch when he closed the door behind him, he felt his pulse start to race. He pressed his hands to the sides of his pants to keep them from perspiring, then realised Muldoon probably wanted him to salute, and did so before returning to attention.

Muldoon was sitting in a wing-backed chair facing the door. He had a book in his hand, and was pretending to read it, but Dick could tell from the lack of eye movement that he was playing a waiting game. Given no choice, Dick continued to stand at attention, trying to keep his thoughts from spinning away from him. Would Muldoon want to sodomise him? Dick and Nix had never done that. They'd never had a safe place and enough time to try, and they had stuck to mouths and hands and thighs. Dick had always imagined that kind of entry would hurt, but he promised himself that he'd walk into hell before he'd give Muldoon the satisfaction of crying out. Or would Muldoon want something else? What? Dick had heard enough crude comments from the men to have a generalised knowledge of what one person could do to humiliate another in bed, but now he wondered if those filthy, beautiful soldiers had half the imagination for cruelty that Muldoon had. He hoped they didn't.

"You're a punctual boy," Muldoon said at last, glancing up from his book. Dick said nothing, and he waited a beat before commanding, "Strip for me."

Dick nodded. This time his hands didn't shake. He slid his tie over his head, and worked down his shirt buttons before shrugging out of his suspenders and pulling his shirt and undershirt off. He laid each over a side table by the door, and told himself this was just like undressing for a shower. He crouched to unlace and loosen his boots then stepped out of them. He could feel Muldoon's eyes on him, but he didn't look back, just focused on each button and zip as it came. Soon, he was down his briefs, and when he put those on top of the pile, he returned to attention, fixing his gaze on the clock on the mantel behind Muldoon's head. Next to that was the door to the bedroom, the corner of the bed just visible. Dick was breathing harder than he should be, and he tried to calm his racing pulse, but it was no good. Apparently he could tell himself whatever he liked, but the fear churning inside him didn't know the difference.

He half expected Muldoon to get up and examine him, like a farmer would look over a stock animal, but he didn't leave his chair. Dick didn't have to look at him to see that the cat-with-cream smile was back. Muldoon set the book down and said, "Come here, and kneel, son. I liked the look of you on your knees last night." He touched the corner of his mouth and stroked down his chin, wordlessly reminding Dick of the semen dribbling down his face. Dick thought he didn't have enough blood left in him to flush, but he could feel his cheeks heating at the gesture. Nix had said that about liking him on his knees once, only Nix had been laughing, and so had Dick. Dick blinked hard. He shouldn't think about Nix here.

With a short nod, Dick took the two steps to Muldoon's chair and knelt. At least Muldoon had a rug, so that was easier on his knees. 

Muldoon gestured at his crotch and made a _carry on_ gesture, and Dick very nearly sighed with relief. Did Muldoon just want Dick to suck him off every night? That wouldn't be so bad; he'd done it once already. When he took Muldoon's cock out, he started to stroke it the way he had before, then bent to lick. He still had heat in his cheeks, and now felt a twist of nausea at how easy this was. How could any of this be a relief? What kind of man was he to fold so easily?

"Hold up, son," Muldoon said, and Dick could hear a laugh in his voice. He rested a hand on Dick's forehead, holding him off. "Hands behind your back. Just use your mouth."

Dick did as he was told, clasping his hands like he was at ease and shifting his knees wider to keep his balance. It was awkward: leaning in without being able to brace himself. He kept running his nose into the edge of Muldoon's belt, and he hated how clumsy it made him feel. Then he hated himself for caring if he was clumsy or not. They were Muldoon's rules, clearly invented to literally unbalance Dick, and he was falling for it. Muldoon's cock wasn't even hard yet. Dick risked a look up, and almost sighed at the satisfied smile tugging at Muldoon's lips. He'd probably pulled himself off right before Dick arrived, just to make it more difficult.

"Want some advice, son?" Muldoon asked lightly, as though Dick had a choice.

"Sir," Dick murmured through gritted teeth.

"Take it in your mouth," Muldoon told him, then after half a beat, added, "And wait."

Again Dick shifted his knees wider and bent down. He licked at the head of Muldoon's slack cock, tasting the come on the end, and managed to lap and suck it into his mouth without using his teeth. When he had most of the length inside him, he tilted his head to rest his cheek on Muldoon's thigh. He didn't want to lean on the man's lap, like some kind of pet, but if he didn't have another point of balance he was going to fall, and that would undoubtedly be worse.

Muldoon sighed and shifted in his chair to spread his legs and push his hips towards Dick's face. Dick had to tilt his head further, and then raise his chin enough to be able to breath through his nose and keep from choking.

"Good," Muldoon murmured. "That's good, son. Hold there until I tell you to stop." He stroked Dick's hair absently smoothing it over and over like Dick really was a dog with his head on Muldoon's lap. His cock wasn't getting any harder, and already Dick's neck hurt from the angle he had to hold. He took long shallow breaths trough his nose, and tried to ignore how the soft flesh stuffing his mouth made him feel. He almost shut his eyes, then remembered how that had ended the night before. Instead he stared at Muldoon's belt buckle and waited. The clock ticked in the background, and Muldoon's breaths came steady and slow. He was utterly calm, sitting there and watching Dick squirm the way a scientist would observe an insect.

After a long time had passed, Dick heard the rustle of paper and realised that Muldoon was picking up his book. "Would you like me to read to you?" Muldoon asked, and when Dick had no way to reply, proceeded to quote the army field manual on small unit leadership. "'Integrity,'" he quoted, "'the uprightness of character and soundness of moral principle, the quality of absolute truthfulness and honesty, is an indispensable trait in a leader. In the army, the stakes are too high to place the lives of its members in the hands of men with questionable integrity.'"

Dick had read the words hundreds of times before, but now they washed over him in an entirely new light, and he felt shame pool deep inside him. He could spend the day telling himself that he was doing what was needed, but that was impossible believe when he was naked on his knees hardly able to breath around his superior officer's cock. 

"'Unless a man is honest, he cannot be relied upon at all. There is no compromise. The military profession does not permit the slightest deviation from the highest standards of personal integrity.'"

A true soldier would have been able to think his way out of it. Nix would have known what to do, but then Nix wouldn't have sunk in this mire in the first place. Dick had been too stupid to use his one chance to talk to him to find a way out, and after what he'd said to Nix, even if Nix knew the truth, would he even try help now? Dick had chosen wrongly at every turn, and he was paying for it now. Dick closed his eyes, just for a moment, and swallowed past the lump in his throat.

At last, Muldoon's cock stirred and began to swell, and Dick felt his breath quicken. Muldoon was still stroking his hair, his fingers a steady slide from Dick's forehead past his ear down to the nape of his neck, and then back, over and over in time rise and fall of his words. "'A leader should be dignified. Dignity implies a state of being worthy or honourable. It requires the control of one's actions and emotions.'"

His cock was growing too large for Dick to hold much longer, but when Dick tried to pull away, Muldoon's hand tightened in his hair, holding him in place as he rolled his hips against Dick's face. Dick had to struggle to breath through his nose between thrusts, and his ears started to ring again. The steady cadence of Muldoon's voice carried over everything, still reading, "'Your men will look to you for examples they may follow; or, conversely, use you as an excuse for their own shortcomings. Your individual appearance and conduct must bring forth from your subordinates respect, pride, and a desire to meet the standards you set.'"

Muldoon's cock filled his mouth now, swelling over his tongue down his throat, choking him. Dick gagged, and blinked hard to, trying to control his body's reactions. His fingers were digging into his wrist hard enough to make his hands tingle, and he had to flex his thighs to keep his balance. He knew he couldn't fall, but he also he couldn't breathe at all now, and his body was starting to shake. He could tell that each squirm and attempt to control himself was only making Muldoon harder, and struggled for control. He desperately didn't want to be complicit in Muldoon's pleasure, but he wasn't strong enough to control his body. Muldoon had counted on his lack of control, it seemed.

At least, Muldoon wouldn't last much longer. His diction was starting to falter, and the thrusts against Dick's throat grew ragged. "'The commander who fails to, uh... to stand by his principles where the welfare of his command is concerned, or who attempts to avoid the responsibility...' ah, damn, that's good."

In his panic to breathe, Dick pulled away when Muldoon came, and the semen half filled his mouth and then shot across his face. Dick choked and coughed, falling to his hands in front of the chair. He wanted to curl up on himself and wrap his arms around his head like he had before, but he couldn't, not on the floor at Muldoon's feet. Muldoon would not see Dick turn himself into a shivering ball trying to protect his neck from blows that weren't falling. He kept his head down and focused on pulling himself together.

When he caught his breath again, Dick wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and forced himself back into a kneeling position. The attempt to clean himself had only smeared the come into his skin, and he thought he had it in his hair as well. He tried not care about that now. First, he had to know if this was over, or if the night had some other humiliation in store.

The wall clock had almost crawled around to 2210, but those thirty five minutes had felt like a lifetime to Dick. He didn't know if he could last even half an hour more, not without some respite.

"Will that be all, sir?" he asked as evenly as he could. His throat hurt as though he'd been screaming, and he was ashamed to feel a tear rolling down his face. He didn't brush it away; he couldn't.

Muldoon's eyes narrowed. "I expect complete obedience," he growled. "You were instructed not to move."

"No excuses, sir," Dick replied.

"You may expect your punishment tomorrow night at 2130," Muldoon said, savouring each word. Dick shivered. "You are dismissed."

"Sir." Dick pushed himself to his feet and returned to where he'd stacked his clothes. He didn't bother to dress past his shirt and trousers, but made his escape with the rest tucked under his arm, perversely glad that his own billet was so close and so private.

Once he had his own door firmly closed behind him, with a chair wedged under the handle. Dick sank to his bed and tried to work out what the hell he was going to do. He had no illusions that he'd be able to endure whatever Muldoon had planned for the next night with even a scrap of his dignity intact, and he was beginning to worry about his sanity.

It hadn't taken Muldoon fifteen minutes to feel straight to Dick's weaknesses, and to pry at all the tender places he held most dear. He'd made sure to violate not only Dick's personal integrity, but his sense of service and duty. Dick nearly had those infantry manuals memorised, and he believed the words Muldoon had read with all his heart. He knew that for all their grousing the men believed them too, and looked to Dick to be their paragon and their protector. If any one of that man had seen what Dick was doing in that room, they would have made sure he walked into the next German line of fire without a helmet. No enlisted man would serve under an officer who would let himself be used like Dick just had, and as for other officers...

Dick wished that Nix was somewhere far away—preferably New Jersey—and that he never looked at Dick again.

Unfortunately, he would undoubtedly be at Sink's briefing the next morning, and so would Dick. He didn't have any choice about that either.

Groaning, Dick got up and washed his face. He didn't have anything in his hair after all, but he wished fervently for a shower. He was glad that he didn't know what it was like to want a drink, though he thought it might be coming to him. The corner of Dick's mouth twitched up at what Nix would think of that, and then he caught sight of his smiling reflection and turned away.

Finished washing, he crawled into the bed, pulled the blankets up over his head and tried to sleep, but the words Muldoon had read to him wouldn't stop running circles through his mind: _A leader should be dignified. Dignity implies a state of being worthy or honourable. It requires the control of one's actions and emotions._

Dick couldn't see how he'd ever feel worthy or honourable again, and the idea that he was letting his men down gnawed at him long into the night.


	3. Chapter 3

Nix was indeed at at the regimental operations briefing the next morning. He slouched against the back corner, again unshaven, looking like he'd slept in his ODs—if he'd slept at all. Sink was watching Nix out of the corner of his eye, possibly to see if he managed to stay standing. From slight tremble in his hands, Nix was already supplementing his coffee, and from the look in Sink's eye, his CO was well aware.

Muldoon came into the briefing just before it started and made his way across the room to stand next to Dick. He stopped too close—as close as Nix used to stand—so that their fingers could have brushed if they liked. Dick folded his arms. His shoulder bumped into Muldoon's, and they exchanged a glance. Muldoon wore that kindly smile again, and Dick made his mouth turn up slightly in return.

Sink wanted 2nd Battalion to do a reconnaissance patrol across the river, and gestured for Nix to lay out the plan. Dick stepped in so that he could see the map, making himself not look up at Nix's face, even though he was close enough to smell his breath. If he lit a match right now, the fumes would probably blow the whole HQ. The hair on the backs of Nix's hands stood out against skin that was almost white as he pointed to the best places to cross the river, what positions Sink wanted them to investigate.

"Eight-man, squad," Muldoon said, looking at the map critically, and Dick nodded. "Small, quiet and fast. Can D Company supply that, Dick?"

Dick blinked at his Christian name. Muldoon hadn't used it before. "Uh, yes, sir," he said, and sighed a little in relief that Muldoon for once would not be handling every detail. Was this a reward? Or was it luring him into ease before the promised punishment that night? He wished he knew if he could separate what Muldoon did to him from Muldoon's command judgement, but he hadn't seen him in battle.

Nix snorted and straightened away from the map, away from Dick. Sink sent him another sceptical look, and Dick wondered if Nix had long at regiment. If he kept this up, he'd find himself shuffled back behind the lines, where he couldn't get anyone hurt. Dick didn't know if he hoped that would happen or not. He wanted Nix safe, but at the same time that kind of demotion would cut deep. Despite his laissez faire attitudes, Nix had always held a quiet pride at being good at his job. Dick didn't want to know how he'd react to having it taken away. He wished again that Harry was back, and then again for Strayer when Muldoon patted his shoulder—hand lingering for a moment too long—as Sink dismissed them.

When Dick looked up, Nix was already gone. Dick took a copy of the map and went to find Dog Company.

He tapped first platoon for the patrol, as second hadn't gotten its replacements yet, and walked the line with Captain McMillan of Dog, and Speirs, who was still watching him thoughtfully. Dick had always had trouble working out what Speirs was thinking and it seemed to be going both ways at the moment. He didn't ask anything non-tactical, at least, and Dick was glad not to have to lie to him too.

When McMillan went off to brief the men for the patrol, Dick drifted towards the Easy Company CP. It was just Lipton there for the moment, still coughing up a lung and shivering. He gave Dick a harried look before he saw who'd come in, then smiled and saluted. The familiar, scared smile made Dick's breath catch. He wished he could pretend that he was still a first lieutenant, and Lip was still a platoon sergeant, and they were back in England before their first jump. He'd liked the men they'd been then; there'd been fear for what was to come, sure, but also confidence and optimism, and a knowledge that the Toccoa men could rely on each other for anything. Dick felt like a different person now, like the Dick Winters who'd organised a basketball team in Aldbourne had died in the Ardennes, and the man he was now was some kind of shadow.

"Holding in there, Carwood?" Dick asked, wondering if he sounded as stilted as he felt.

"I think I'll make it, sir," Lip answered, and then coughed violently until he was doubled over on the couch. "Probably," he added with a half smile.

"Good," Dick said. He wished he could order Lipton off the line, but Easy couldn't afford to lose another officer, officially commissioned or not. "Take it slow, all right?"

"Tell that to the Germans," Lip said. "They've been shelling our positions all morning. Think you can get Nixon to get word across the river?"

Dick tried to smile, failed, and said, "Why don't you ask him yourself?"

"Haven't seen him around lately." Lip frowned, then squinted up at Dick with sudden intensity. Dick watched him work through a number of potential questions before asking, "Are you okay, sir?"

For a moment, Dick wavered. He wanted so badly to tell someone what was happening, to ask for help, for a way out. Who could he trust if not Carwood Lipton, who'd been his steady right hand since Toccoa? He'd stood like a rock in the centre of a maelstrom through every campaign. Lip would know what to do. He always did. Dick could tell him, and he'd put a hand on Dick's shoulder and assure him that he was going to get through, like he had with every man in the company for the last two months.

Then Dick tried to imagine actually saying the words, and having Lip know what he'd allowed Muldoon to do to him—and he would have to implicate Nix as well, because what on Earth would someone use to blackmail Captain Richard Winters?—and he realised that the whole thing was impossible. "I'm fine, First Sergeant," he said. "Just a little tired."

He could tell that Lip didn't believe him, but it didn't really matter. He wasn't the kind of man who would push a superior unless he knew someone's life was on the line. "Do you want Doc Roe to give you something to knock you out?" he asked finally.

Dick shook his head again. "I'm fine. I'll see about trying to get your message to the Germans," he added with a half smile and made his escape.

* * *

That afternoon, Muldoon showed up at McMillan's briefing of Dog Company, ending Dick's hopes for a more hands-off approach. He didn't like that Dick and McMillan had put an NCO in charge of the squad, and changed the command to a young lieutenant so freshly out of West Point that Dick could smell the starch on his collar.

"I had intended Lt. Fitzpatrick to be an observer," Dick said quietly after they left. "It's a sensitive operation."

Muldoon shook his head. "You give your noncoms too much reign. It's a mistake I see a lot of young officers who started in the ranks make; they think because they had the decrement to rise up, that all the other noncoms do. If you're going to make field-grade, son, you've got to learn better." Dick felt his face heat, with anger not embarrassment, and made his body fall into the remembered patterns it had learned under Sobel. It didn't matter what he thought, if a superior was saying it. Muldoon's smiled slightly, and Dick knew that his reaction had not only been obvious, be that it pleased Muldoon enough to keep proding. "Look at your commission to First Sergeant Lipton, keeping him in the same company. 2nd Battalion's been undermanned for a long time, and I'm sure that Strayer did his best,"—his tone implied that he believed otherwise—"but that's over now, and we won't be ignoring the rules any more. Once Lipton's commission comes through, I'll arrange to trade him to 3rd Battalion for one of Item's second lieutenants."

"Yes, sir," Dick said. Easy couldn't afford to lose Lipton too, especially not in exchange for some replacement. He wondered if Muldoon didn't understand that, or if he did but this was another punishment aimed at Dick, this one directed at his home company. "I'll look into it, sir." Lip's promotion wouldn't be down from the army for a few days, and Dick was reasonably sure it could find its way to the bottom of the daunting stack of paperwork on his desk, and stay there until Strayer got back. A week was nothing in the turning cogs of the United States Army.

"See that you do," Muldoon said, and patted Dick's shoulder again, but back towards his neck so that his hand found the inch of skin between Dick's scarf and his helmet. Dick forced himself not to flinch back, not in a public street with half the battalion coming and going, but from Muldoon's smile he knew that he'd again shown too much of a reaction. "I'll see you tonight," Muldoon said. "You can debrief me before the patrol leaves." He left Dick standing alone, adjusting his scarf higher around his face.

The squad from D Company wasn't due to leave until 2300, and Dick realised that his appointment with Muldoon would have to proceed him seeing them off. He shivered and headed for the showers. Davidson had set up taken over a gymnasium as officers' showers, and set up a schedule based on availability of power to heat and run the water. Dick remembered seeing a window some time before chow, and he desperately needed to wash himself clean.

The cracked tiles and copper-stained drains of the locker room, reminded Dick of the ancient athletics building at Franklin and Marshall College, only with peculiar French taps. He could hear a couple of the showers running already, and wondered who else was taking advantage of the chance to clean up. A thought caught him as he was unbuttoning his fly, and his hands froze. But no, Muldoon had just come from the 17th which had been stood down in Mourmelon, with all the showers a man could want. If it came to the worst, it wasn't like Muldoon hadn't already seen it. Dick made himself strip the rest of the way, and folded his uniform into an open locker. He wasn't so weak that he could no longer face a public shower.

It was just Foley and Shams in the showers, and by the time Dick stepped into the steam-filled room, they were already towelling off. They both grinned at Dick, clearly delighted to be clean again, and snapped off salutes. Foley passed him a new bar of soap on the way out, and Dick had the place to himself. For the moment, at least.

He worked out the taps in the stall farthest from the door and stepped into the steaming water, wondering how the heck they'd gotten the it this beautifully hot. Dick cupped the water and splashed it over his face over and over again, soaping his body from his feet to his hair, rinsing, and washing again. He had to wash his hair three times before the soap started to suds. It was a terrible waste of both soap and hot water, but he couldn't find it in him to care.

When he was done, Dick realised that he hadn't felt this clean since that bath in Paris, two months ago. The French washes in the woods had done nothing to put a dent in the grime that permeated his skin. He wondered if he could requisition one of those claw-footed tubs, but the memory of Paris just made him think of Nix and their first times together. They'd gotten good use out of that tub. Dick closed his eyes and leaned heavily against the wall, bracing under water that didn't feel comforting any more. For all that he'd washed away every bit of dirt and grease, he didn't feel clean, and didn't know if he ever could.

He heard bootsteps in the locker room, and straightened, not wanting a junior officer to see him looking so beaten down. Turning the water off, he finger combed his hair out of his face, and started to leave.

He almost ran smack into Nix in the narrow passage to the lockers

"Sorry," he said out of habit, and then frozen when he saw Nix's shell-shocked expression. It was the first time he'd looked Nix in the eye since the bell tower the day before, and Nix had aged five years. "Lew! You look awful," Dick blurted before he could stop himself.

Nix's lips parted, and for a heartbeat it looked like he was going to toss off one of his usual smart retorts, but then his expression hardened. His eyes flicked up and down Dick's naked body, assessing and dismissing him, and then he shoved past into the showers, muttering, "Fuck you, Winters," as he went.

Dick almost turned and grabbed him by the arm. He wanted so badly to take Nix by the shoulders and make him listen to his explanation, to make him see that the last thing in the world Dick wanted was to hurt him. He wanted to drop to his knees and tell him how sorry he was.

But that was impossible. If Dick had wanted Nix in on this, he'd blown that chance the day before, and he'd done it on purpose, to protect him. His reasoning hadn't changed. If anything, his encounter with Muldoon the night before only reinforced it. Dick should be relieved that his lies had worked, and that Nix didn't want anything to do with either of them. Dick only wished that he could protect Nix from himself as well as he'd protected him from Muldoon.

At last, Dick pulled himself away. He towelled and dressed as fast as he could, listening to the splash of water inside, and imagining it washing over Nix's body. All through December he'd fantasised about what'd he'd do after, when they were safe both from the Germans and from the prying eyes of the army. He'd been planning to pull Nix into the shower with him and wash every bit of his skin. They'd be able to touch each other for hours, as the water and soap slid off them, and they'd never be cold again.

Dick shivered, pulled his jacket more tightly around him, and made his way to the mess.

He pushed his food around his plate until it got cold, and then forced himself to eat all of the hamburger stew and rehydrated potatoes. He'd already had Lip and Speirs looking at him suspiciously today. He couldn't afford to let any more of his facade slip.

He tried not to think of what Muldoon might have meant by punishment, but his thoughts kept circling back to it. He was shaken by how deeply the night before had cut him. It hadn't even been an act he hadn't performed of his own free will another time, the sexual part at least; it had hardly even hurt much. It shouldn't matter what happened to his body. He should be able to force his emotions aside and take whatever Muldoon could lay on him, and even find some kind of satisfaction in not letting the son of a bitch see him hurting. So far, he'd almost managed that, but deep in his guts he was afraid of Muldoon and what he could do to Dick. He was afraid of how small and scared Muldoon could make him feel in mere minutes. Most of all, he was afraid that Muldoon knew exactly how afraid he was, and was planning to use his own fear to pull him apart piece by piece until there was nothing left of him.

"Sir?"

Lipton's voice tore Dick out of his thoughts. He realised that the mess was clearing for the next shift, which meant that Dick must have been staring into space for twenty minutes. Lip was wrapped in two jackets and a blanket, and still shivering, but he'd showed up same as Dick had.

Dick thought for a moment about how Roman Legions would protect their Eagles to the last man, keeping honour and hope alive in the face of devastating losses. Maybe he and Lip were showing the colours, in their own ways, though Lip was probably doing a better job. He, at least, wasn't practising his thousand-yard stare in public.

"Are you sure you don't want Doc to give you something to help you sleep?" Lip asked gently.

"I can never wake up, after," Dick told him, truthfully. "I can't afford to be knocked out like that."

Lip looked like he wanted to say that Dick was hardly fully present as it was, but he just pulled a face and let it pass.

"Thanks," Dick said, and patted his arm. "I'll be fine."

As he tried to draw away, Lip caught his wrist and held it for a second, keeping him in place so he could study his expression. "Sir," he said, obviously choosing his words with care, "if there were anything I could do, that any of the men could do... hell, sir, you know that we'd all walk into fire for you."

Would, and had. Dick swallowed hard, momentarily lost for words. Lip's hand felt hot on his wrist, even through his gloves and Dick's sleeve, like a freshly forged link in a chain that could hold him in this world. If he let it. Finally, Dick said, "I would not ask any more from Easy than the exemplary service it has already given me."

Lip nodded, like that was the answer he'd been expecting. "Still," he said.

"But," Dick said, an idea catching him just before he drew away. "But could you keep an eye on Lewis? I... uh, I can't right now, and he could use a friend."

He wondered how much of that Lip understood, not a lot from his quizzical expression, but enough to nod and tell Dick, "I'll do my best."

The promise made Dick's steps a little lighter as he made way back to his way along the line of the river, checking in with the men. Maybe Lipton would have some hope of corralling Nix; he had a better chance than Dick, at any rate. And if he couldn't, maybe Luz or Bull, or one the other old hands from Toccoa could. That wave of optimism carried him all the way around 2nd Battalion and though to his own billet, and dropped like a stone once he had the door shut and the lamp lit.

* * *

He had ten minutes to wait. He should have slowed up on his inspection, but he hadn't wanted to risk getting held up and not arriving on time. He pulled out a field manual intended for battalion commanders, meaning to force his mind to something else, but just looking at the table of contents made his stomach roil. _Chapter 1. Moral qualities, leadership, and training._

Dick snapped the book shut, and reached for another book, a biography of Alexander the Great, but then he remembered that Nix had lent it to him and let it drop back into his footlocker. He'd have to give it to Zielinski to have it delivered back to Regimental HQ. He deliberately didn't look at his Bible.

He stared at the wall for a few minutes, trying to calm his mind. Shifty had once said that his father was such a fine shot because he could make his heart stop beating, that he made his mind into a clear summer sky, until there was nothing but his hands, the rifle and the target. If Dick was going to get through this night, he would have to train his mind to do that. He tried to think of blue sky over fields back in Pennsylvania, pictured the hill down to the pond, and the barn swallows swirling and darting after flies.

He remembered the dream of Nix lying naked on the grass just there, and turned his mind away from home. He wouldn't think of Lancaster any more than he'd think of Nix, not while he had Muldoon's cock in his mouth.

Dick took a deep breath and remembered the black sky outside of the C-47 after the crew chief had opened the door, how for a long time Dick hadn't been able to see anything, not even the lights of the other planes, just blackness and cold sky. He'd had a knot of fear twisted up inside him then, too, even before they'd started catching flack.

Holding that image in his mind, Dick stood, shaved, straightened his uniform and walked up stairs to Muldoon's billet.

This time, Muldoon was in his bedroom, not out in the sitting room, and he told Dick to come through and stand in front of the bed. "I've been thinking about the best way to make sure you remember your lesson, son," Muldoon told him.

Dick, standing at attention, stared at the blackout curtain pulled down across the window. It had a ravel in the bottom corner that must let some light out. Maybe the krauts would see it and shell them both into oblivion. He didn't reply to Muldoon's comment. He didn't see the point.

Muldoon was sitting on his bed, legs spread like they had been the night before, fully dressed in ODs and boots, but musette bag and side arm hung on the wall. This time Dick wasn't going to let himself relax into thinking that whatever happened would be easy. "You'd better come here," Muldoon said, and Dick stepped forward. "Now kneel right there."

It wasn't obvious what purpose kneeling fully clothed next to Muldoon's foot could serve, but it became clear immediately after when Muldoon grabbed the back of Dick's shirt and pulled his body across his legs. Dick let himself be manhandled until he lay across Muldoon's lap, feet on on side, head hanging dizzyingly on the other. He braced his hands on the floor to keep from sliding all the way over and landing face first. His shirt had come untucked, and he could feel the cold of the air along the small of his back. Muldoon laid a broad hand just there, spreading his fingers over Dick's spine, holding him in place across his leg. With the other hand, he unclipped Dick's suspenders and then yanked his pants and briefs down, exposing his ass.

Dick closed his eyes, glad that this time Muldoon wouldn't be able to see his face. His blood was flowing to his head, his dog tags kept swinging into his nose, and he felt sick and dizzy. He sucked in a breath when he felt Muldoon stroking his ass. It was the first time he'd really touched Dick, other than a hand in his hair, and even the light caress made Dick shiver. It wasn't hard to guess what was coming next.

"I gave you a simple order last night, son," Muldoon said, his tone stern but kind, almost paternal. Dick would pay real money if he could get the man to stop calling him _son_. "You failed to follow it."

"Sir," Dick grunted. Muldoon's leg was digging into his solar plexus, making it hard to breath.

"How do you think I should discipline you for disobeying me?"

Dick didn't see how that was a question, given his position, but he also knew that failing to answer it wouldn't make his situation any better. "Are you planning to..." he tripped over the word, then took a breath and spat it out, "You're planning to spank me, sir." Like a child. Dick had had his share of whippings as a boy at home and at school, but not across his father's lap since he was a primary student.

Muldoon chuckled and rubbed up and down Dick's ass, kneading each cheek lightly. "What an excellent idea," he said. "For a start." He trailed a fingernail down Dick's spine until is slid down the crack of his ass and over his hole. Dick twitched violently, his whole body trying to convulse away from that lightest of touches. Muldoon's hand on his back held him firm. "How many blows do you think you've earned?" he asked.

It was a trick question, like Sobel asking how many push ups someone should do to work off an invented infraction. If the number was too low, it would be doubled or tripled on grounds of insolence, forcing the guesser to go high and consent to his own humiliation. "Twenty, sir?" Dick said. He vaguely remembered getting ten smacks as a child.

The finger on his hole pressed in just slightly, then withdrew. "Let's round it up to two dozen," Muldoon suggested affably.

Dick didn't say anything in reply, but simply waited for the blows to start. He pictured that night sky outside the C-47s, imagined that the chill of the room was the wind on his face.

The first blow shocked through his whole body, snapping his eyes open. He rocked forward against Muldoon's leg, pressing the air from his lungs until he was gasping. "One," Muldoon said, and Dick could hear the smile in his voice. "Do you want to count them, son? Sometimes I have trouble keeping track."

That trap was also obvious, but Dick still nodded. He was buggered either way, probably literally. The second blow hit lower, where his ass met the tops of his thighs, making an obscene wet smacking sound, and stinging like hell. "Two," Dick counted, resigned. The forced attention made it hard to think of his sky.

The third and forth blows covered the other side of his ass and the backs of his thighs, and after Dick counted them, Muldoon paused to rub the skin. "You're turning a very fine red colour," Muldoon commented. "Carrot tops flush so nicely." The tips of his fingers slipped between Dick cheeks as he cupped his ass and squeezed. Dick gasped out a breath, and shut his eyes again. The shortness of breath and dizziness made his head spin, and every touch felt unavoidable and surreal.

The next blow feel where the first had, with even more force, shocking at whimper out of Dick before he could steel himself. He'd promised himself that he wouldn't cry out, but it seemed he was failing at that, along with everything else. "Five," he gasped, then, "Six."

The pain seemed less shocking after that, or maybe Muldoon wasn't hitting him as hard for seven and eight. At nine he paused to run his hands over Dick's ass again, the roughness of his callouses catching at Dick's sensitised skin. He pushed Dick's legs further apart, and slid his hand between Dick's thighs, running his fingertips up behind his balls. "What is discipline?" he asked.

Dick's mind went completely blank. "Sir?"

"I asked you to define discipline, soldier." An edge crept into Muldoon's voice, and his hand curled around Dick's balls. He didn't squeeze; he didn't have to.

"'Discipline,'" Dick said, scrubbing through his brain for the right words. He'd read them so many times, all those nights staying up to study manuals, all those nights he could have spent with... No, he'd promised himself not to think about that, not here. Finally he found a memory of a court martial he'd presided over, of lecturing some poor PFC. "'Discipline is the prompt obedience to orders and, in the absence of orders, obedience to what a man believes the orders would have been.'"

"That is correct." Muldoon's hand slid back up to his ass, patting it lightly, and Dick sighed slightly. He hated that he was relieved. He had meant to have his mind be a dark night sky, but Muldoon kept pulling him back from his imagined escape.

The next blow was harder again, right across the top of his ass below his tail bone. Head spinning, Dick struggled to remember what number they were on. Nine he thought. He said, "Nine," then, "Ten," then, "Eleven," then, "Twelve." He almost sobbed on twelve, his breath coming in ragged gasps. Dick could feel Muldoon's cock becoming hard, pressing up against Dick's his right hip. Now with each blow, Muldoon rocked his hips slightly, rising up against Dick's body as Dick shook and struggled to breathe.

"'Punishment,'" Muldoon quoted, "'is just penalty for a breach of discipline or law. It is imposed by someone in authority after thorough investigation, careful weighing of facts, and consideration of the graveness of the offence.' Do you agree that this is a just penalty, son?"

Dick's blood was all in his head anyway, so he couldn't flush, but he still felt as though his ears were burning. "Yes, sir," he said, though even Sobel would not have gone a fraction of this distance, and the men under him had mutinied. No soldier in the world would accept this, or none save Dick.

Muldoon laid two more smacks on the back of Dick's thighs. They were almost playful compared to the other blows, and Dick braced for the follow up. Instead of striking again, Muldoon paused for a moment, stroking Dick's ass as he rolled his hips. "I'm looking forward to this," he said, and indicated what he meant by circling his fingertip around Dick's hole. "I'll have the rest of the week to enjoy it, won't I?"

"Sir," Dick agreed, though he was starting to wonder if he would survive another seven or eight nights of this. He wasn't sure he'd survive this one. Then he cursed his own weakness. Of course he would survive. He had to.

The next six blows came fast and hard, each rocking Dick against Muldoon's thigh, so that he had to gasp out the numbers. Tears were stinging his eyes now, and he was glad that Muldoon couldn't see him blinking them back. He could never have imagined that a spanking would hurt this much, or feel this humiliating. His skin burned, and even Muldoon's mocking caresses stung now.

"That's the twenty you thought you deserved," Muldoon commented. "Do you think I should stop now, son? Have you been punished enough for your disobedience?"

"No, sir," Dick said through gritted teeth, knowing that any other answer would make it worse, no matter how much he wanted this to end. "You said two dozen, sir."

"So I did." Instead of striking him with his hand, Muldoon picked up something that Dick couldn't see but which whistled through the air and cut deeply into Dick's ass. Dick cried out, a short bark of pain tearing out his throat before he could stop it. He was unable to keep count, pain stealing his breath and burning stars into his vision.

Muldoon didn't seem to care about the lost count as he switched Dick three more times rapid fire, each blow wringing another cry from Dick. His hips rose and fell steadily, rubbing his cock up and down the side of Dick's hip.

Finished with the official punishment, Muldoon dropped the switch with a clatter and fumbled with his fly. When he freed his cock, he angled his hips so that it could rub skin to skin against Dick's hip. The cock felt hot and smooth, and Dick kept his head down and his eyes closed.

He flinched when Muldoon hawked and spat, the spittle landing on the crack of his ass. As Muldoon's cock thrust against Dick's hip, his fingers rubbed the spit into Dick's hole. He didn't press deeper then the entrance, but his touch was full of promise. Dick knew that the next night he would be spread wide with this man's fingers inside him.

"No one's ever touched you like this before, have they?" Muldoon asked softly; he sounded almost sorry for Dick.

"No," Dick said. He'd wanted to try it, but never got the time or place right. Well, he didn't have a choice now. "I mean: no, sir."

Muldoon's hips bucked up and he came hard, spurting across Dick's tender ass. He grunted heavily and then was still, only his cock twitching as it emptied. Then Muldoon sighed heavily. He traced the semen along each of the tracks left by the switch, fingers marking burning trails, humming in approval of each mark. Then he ran his finger around Dick's hole one last time, rubbing the semen into his skin, and said, "You're dismissed." 

He shoved Dick off his lap, and Dick, stunned by the suddenness of it, went down in a tumble of limbs, landing hard on his hip.

Dick lay for a moment, trying to pull his wits about himself. He felt as if he'd been flayed, not spanked, and he couldn't seem to put one thought before another. Eventually he crawled to his hands and knees and got his pants pulled up. His briefs stuck to the semen on his ass, and his pants rubbed at tender places, but Dick couldn't think about that now. He stood, saluted, and waked out through the sitting room, legs and arms moving like automata. 

Only when he had the door closed behind him did he realise that it was 2225, and that if he wanted to talk to the squad from D Company, he wouldn't have time to wash or change.

* * *

Dick quick timed it across Haguenau to Dog's CP—pain burning through his ass with every step—and caught the men as they were checking their gear.

McMillan was already watching over them, and when Dick slid over to him, he said in a low voice, "I told Lt. Fitzpatrick to make sure to listen to Sgt. Walchuck. He knows what he's doing."

Dick nodded. "Good." He didn't like the idea of sending an untested junior officer out into real combat on a sensitive mission, not this late in the war. The boy would have to learn eventually, but Dick didn't want it to be on the backs of his soldiers. "Think he listened?"

"Walchuck listened," McMillan said, then shook his head and sighed. "Why don't the bastards just surrender already? How much longer do they think they can hold out?"

"Would you? If they were sitting on the other side of the St Lawrence heading into Maine?" Dick asked. He thought of the Reds rolling in from the east, and the British, French and Americans from the west, and felt of a pang of empathy for the German army. They'd gambled everything with that Christmas push for Antwerp, and Dick had helped make sure they'd lost.

"We didn't start a war with everyone all at once," McMillan said unsympathetically.

Dick sighed. "No, we did not."

"We're ready, sirs," Fitzpatrick said. He didn't look ready. He looked like he should be cycling down a quiet side street tossing newspapers onto people's steps. Dick didn't think he'd ever looked that green.

You couldn't say that to kid going on their first real mission, so he nodded to the boy, and told him, "Good luck. Stay safe," and returned his salute. He nodded to Walchuck, who gave him a resigned look and nodded back.

"Send a runner to my billet when they come in," Dick told McMillan.

They exchanged salutes, and Dick made his way slowly to back to the rowhouse he shared with Muldoon. When he got to the door, he hesitated. He tried to imagine spending the night knowing that Muldoon was sleeping in the room above him. Maybe he would be touching himself and remembering what he'd done to Dick, or planning what he was going to do the following night.

A wave of revulsion rose up in Dick. He went inside and changed into clean briefs, then left as quickly as he'd come. He wouldn't sleep, he knew. If he was going to be awake staring at the walls all night, he might as well do that in his office.

It was quiet there. The signals corps were in another part of the same building, and he could hear their low voices and the click of keys in the distance, but the 2nd Battalion staff offices lay empty. Dick sat gingerly at his desk, sucking in a breath when the stripes on his ass met the hard wooden chair. He would be feeling that every time he moved for days, or he'd be feeling something worse.

Dick let himself have a small moment of weakness, and rested his head in his hands. He wished he could weep, but something inside him was so tightly coiled that it had every emotion wrapped in a dark tangle snarled around his heart and twisting in his gut. Dick made himself draw in deep breaths and think of that dark sky outside the C-47. He was flying high above the English channel, and more than anything in the world he needed to hold himself together for the sake of his men. They were again about to jump, across a river instead of from the sky, and their commander couldn't afford to fall to pieces in front of them.

"I'm on a jump," Dick said aloud, then he straightened his shoulders, switched on his desk lamp and started to work through the papers left over from the previous afternoon. He was on a jump, a mission into enemy territory, and this one just was going to involve falling for another week.


	4. Chapter 4

McMillan's runner arrived around 0530, and Dick found Dog Company CP in disarray, an ambulance pulling out as he arrived. "Report!" he snapped.

"It was a fucking mess, sir," Walchuck snarled. He was trying to sit up to talk while the company medic pinned his arm and cut his jacket open. Blood had soaked his sleeve and was dripping on the floor. "The lieutenant walked smack into one of their patrols, and managed to step on a shoe mine when we retreated. Blew his leg all to hell, and he bled to out before we could get back to the river. Gall bought it, head shot, Petersen caught one in the hip, plus my fucking arm, just as a 'thank you and goodbye' from the krauts."

The jacket finally gave, and the medic slapped a pressure bandage on the still seeping wound. "You're going to be fine, Sergeant," the medic said, and it had the reassurance of being true. Walchuck would doubtless be back on the line in under a week. Dick just wished he could say the same of the others.

"I'll have someone debrief you in the aid station," he said, but he suspected the intelligence gathered by the patrol would not be more illuminating than that there were Germans shooting at them from the other side of the river, and to watch out for mines. "I know you did your best, Sergeant."

Beside him, McMillan looked like he wanted to go over the river and personally murder ever kraut he found, then he rounded on Dick. "Permission to speak, sir."

Dick jerked his head to the dark street outside. When they were out of earshot of the men, he nodded for McMillan to go ahead.

"Lt. Fitzpatrick should never have been in command of that patrol," he snapped. His firsts were balled at his sides, and his whole body was shaking in anger. "He shouldn't have been there at all. I did not carry these men through Belgium to have them killed doing something criminally stupid in Alsace."

"Is that all, Captain?" Dick asked, forcing his voice to mildness.

McMillan hesitated. He clearly either wanted to say more, or go find Muldoon and say the same thing to him, but he knew he couldn't risk anything that would make Battalion take his men away.

"Whatever you say will stay between us," Dick said, prodding him along.

"You would have put Walchuck in command in the first place, wouldn't you, sir?" McMillan asked.

Dick would have, or he'd have left the choice to McMillan. "I am not commanding this battalion," was all he could say.

"You were before!" McMillan said. "You got us though Bastonge, through Foy and Rachamps. I never thought I'd miss Strayer, but I do."

"That," Dick said after taking a sharp breath, "is dangerously close to insubordination, Captain."

McMillan paled, freckled face becoming ghostlike in the dark, and looked at his boots. "Sorry, sir."

It was hard to be angry at a man who'd only said what Dick had been thinking for days. "It's all right. I said it would stay between us, and it will. But be careful what you say," Dick cautioned him, keeping his voice low, "and to whom you say it. Strayer will be back in a week. We just have to keep our heads down and hold on." He supposed that was insubordination too, at least by implication, but he wouldn't leave McMillan hanging. One of them was bad enough.

"That doesn't do Fitzpatrick or Gall any good, sir," McMillan muttered, but it was a last shot, and a half-hearted one. The man looked beaten down.

"Col. Sink having you up against a court martial won't either," Dick told him gently. "Go look after your men. I expect a full report by 0830."

* * *

It was almost six, hours yet until sunrise. Dick walked the line again. News of the botched patrol had travelled ahead of him, and the men were angry and morose. Dick could see the edges of despair in the faces of some of the older hands, and knew they could see it reflected in his own eyes. They'd all been pushed too far in the last few months, and it felt as though they were teetering on an edge, while the slightest nudge could send them over.

Dick's body ached from lack of sleep as much as the beating now, and he felt hunger pulling at him, only it wasn't hunger alone, but a spiritual emptiness. It didn't feel so much like an ache in his chest as much as if something key were missing, as if any moment his heart would lose the will to beat—as if his soul were leaking out of him. His wished, more than anything, that he could talk to Nix. No, not even talk, just stand shoulder to shoulder, and know that Nix had his back, no matter what.

He didn't think that would ever happen again now. Nix would never forgive him for apparently siding with Muldoon against him, and if he knew the truth... no. That would be worse. How could Nix treat Dick the same way as he had before after learning what Dick had let Muldoon do to him? Everything Dick did from now on would be tainted by it. He couldn't imagine that by the time Muldoon was done with him, there'd be much of a man left, let alone a soldier, and Nix wouldn't want scraps that someone else had chewed up and spat on the side of some muddy French road.

He realised that his feet had taken him down to the river. The ruins of what had been a cafe lay a ways below the sandbagged MG emplacement of OP4. It had three walls, most of a roof and a counter left, though the chairs had been scrounged. Dick had been standing in the shadows looking at the river through the broken glass of the window for some time. He checked his watch and realised that it was time to for Sink's briefing, and made himself walk back up into the town. His knees were stiff from standing with his legs locked for so long, and the inside of his eyelids felt like sandpaper. Rubbing them just made everything hurt more, and he realised that he hadn't had coffee yet.

There was coffee at Regiment, but no Nix. Dick looked questioningly at the colonel in command of 1st Battalion, who just shrugged, then rolled his eyes. Dick almost opened his mouth to give the son of a bitch a piece of his mind, then realised how useless that would be, especially with Muldoon standing just behind him. What was the point of defending Nix if he wouldn't even try to look after himself? It was like he wanted the discharge that Dick had been struggling to save him from.

Captain McMillan was there with his report, and Sink frowned more deeply with every word. He was looking at Dick like there was something wrong with him. For a paranoid moment, Dick wondered if he had semen on his face somehow, but no, that had been too nights ago, not... He rubbed his hand over his mouth. Sink looked away, turning to the next issue.

Behind Dick, Muldoon huffed out a breath that Dick knew was a laugh. Dick swayed slightly, then locked his knees again.

"Captain Winters?" That was Sink. Everyone was looking at Dick now.

"Sir?"

"Do you have an alternative proposal?"

Dick struggled to remember what Sink had been talking about. They needed intelligence from across the river. Dick's first patrol had failed. What was the Air Corps doing? But they'd been caught in low cloud and snow for days. Dick cleared his throat, and said, "I believe a more seasoned unit could make a successful reconnaissance patrol. A small squad of combat-experienced men only." He hated that he was putting the men who most needed rest back into danger, but some of them would have to go anyway. Maybe they'd have a hope without a replacement to lead them astray.

"Muldoon?"

"Could work," Muldoon agreed, and Dick stopped holding his breath. "Choose your men, then," he told Dick. "E Company just got replacements."

Dick nodded numbly. Replacements didn't mean he could let his veterans flow through his fingers like water. What would he do if he lost Malarkey or Luz, after all this? How many of his boys from Toccoa were even left? He'd been afraid to count. Was this Muldoon going after his old company again? Or was it just that everyone else was as strapped as they were. "Yes, sir," Dick said when he realised that Sink was still waiting. He could feel Muldoon's breath on the back of his neck.

The meeting moved on again; Dick did his best to follow this time—every detail could mean a life—but his head was pounding like it had after the Fw. had bombed them... was that only a week ago? He swallowed back another gulp of coffee, burning his tongue, and that shook him awake enough to keep up.

Sink didn't ask his opinion again, but at the end of the briefing, he caught Dick's eye and nodded for him to stay. "You look damned rough, Dick," he said.

He must be, for Sink to notice. "Long night, sir," he said.

"Dick, do you need to go..." Sink started to say, but Dick shook his head so violently it made his ears start ringing again.

"No, sir!" he said. "I'd prefer to stay here, sir." He tried to look steady if battle worn, not mad-eyed and desperate, and maybe some of that got through, because Sink nodded.

"Good man," he said. "Try to remember that you aren't the whole battalion staff any more. Muldoon's a good soldier, and we're lucky to have him. He can look out for your boys too."

"Yes, sir," Dick said automatically, then, "I should brief Captain Speirs, sir."

Sink looked him over again. "Get some sleep, Captain."

Dick saluted and left. He didn't see when that would happen, and he didn't see who was going to lead this patrol either. He would let Speirs decide. He had a clear head.

* * *

He wanted to check on the men again before he made plans for the next day, so he started for the aid station rather than Easy's CP.

Walchuck had been released already, but Petersen was there, and looked stupidly grateful to hear the battalion's XO tell him he'd done a good job. He'd be out soon he thought. Dick told him not to rush. They'd be off the line by then. He didn't know if that was true or not, but he'd seen too many wounded men walk back into the line of fire.

The bodies were there too. Gall, who'd joined Dog just before Bastonge, and Fitzpatrick, waxen now in death, missing his left leg. Dick hadn't even met the kid before he'd gone out. He would have to write something to put in McMillan's letter to the boy's parents, and the concept seemed impossible now. "Dear Mr. and Mrs. Fitzpatrick; your son went on a mission he shouldn't have been on, and likely got himself and another man killed doing something careless."

That sounded like a letter Nix would talk about sending, before he buckled down and helped Dick write something decent.

Dick knew he needed to talk to Speirs, but he found he couldn't tear his eyes away from Fitzpatrick's face. The boy had had brown eyes he thought, and curly black hair, though that was full of grease and river water now. He looked impossibly young, still, even dead, and Dick now remembered being that young. He remembered what it had felt like to get to Fort Benning, and be surrounded by boys. Nix had been that young too, then, three years and a stunning amount of combat and whisky ago.

The dead face in front of him changed slowly, thickening around the jaw, the eyes becoming wider set, the brows heavier. Dick blinked hard, but he was still looking down at a young Nix, mutilated and dead, because a mission Dick had allowed him to lead. He reached down, touching the unmoving face, wondering if his hand would pass through it as through a mirage, but his fingers touched cold, still flesh. He pushed the hair away from Nix's forehead, not knowing what to do now. "Dear Mr. and Mrs. Nixon; your son went on a mission because I made him hate me, and now it's my fault that he's dead."

Dick blinked again, aware that tears were filling his eyes as he stood in the middle of a busy aid station, but unable to stop them once they'd started.

"Sir?"

"Give me a minute with him," Dick said blinking hard, but when he looked back down, it was Lt. Fitzpatrick again, not Nix. Dick took a long, ragged breath and ran both his hands through his hair, knocking his helmet to the floor. Then he turned and saw Lipton standing behind him, looking at Dick like Lip was staring down the main gun of a Tiger. "Tell Speirs..." Dick didn't remember. He'd meant to go talk to Easy next, but he'd come here, because... "Lip," he said, lost, hoping that Lip would know what he was supposed to do next.

"Do you want to sit down, sir?" Lip asked, he had his hand on Dick's elbow already and it was easy to guide him away from the carefully stacked fatalities. Instead of leading Dick to a cot, Lip pulled him out into the street and half a block up to a basement entrance to a building Dick hadn't been in before. It looked like it'd been taken over as someone's billet, and from the silverware, Dick could cast a guess as to whose. That was good. He was meant to talk to Speirs.

"Lip," Dick said, as he settled on the edge of the bunk. He winced when his ass hit the bed frame.

"Sir?" Lip asked, caught half way to the door. "I'm just getting Captain Speirs."

Right. Speirs. Yet Dick couldn't shake the image of the dead boy in front of him. "Lip, can you do something for me?"

"Of course." Poor Lipton looked pulled two ways at once, but Dick would let him go in a minute.

"Can you go find Nix? I just need to know if he's all right." He wouldn't see Dick, not any more, but he would talk to Lipton. Everyone liked Lip. He was forthright, and he was kind.

Lip hesitated, then came back over to the bed and crouched in front of it. "I, uh, I thought you two were..." he shook his head and made a vague circular gesture that pulled apart both hands, which Dick didn't think was in any infantry manual. The implied dissolution was both clear and accurate.

"Yeah," Dick said, voice sounding dull even to him. "Yeah. We're not... but, Lip, you've got to look after him, all right? Someone's got to look after him. I... I can't."

"All right, Captain," Lip said, and the gentleness of his tone should have scared Dick—he knew that deep down—but instead he leaned towards it. "I'll go find out how Nixon's doing. Someone's got to know where he is."

That did scare Dick. He caught Lipton's wrist and held on as hard as he could. "You can't ask Muldoon about Nix," he insisted.

Lip frowned, and Dick could see the gears turning. He hadn't meant to say so much, enough that Lip could maybe work out the corners of what was happening, but he'd made a mess of that too.

"Never mind," he said. "It doesn't matter about Nix. I... you should go find Speirs. I need to tell him about..." About something. He should be at Easy's CP, not wherever this was. Dick was still holding onto Lips arm, hard enough that his knuckles turned white and his fingers felt bone. He tried to let go, but his hands didn't seem to be working. "Sorry," he said as Lip carefully freed himself and guided Dick's hand to the edge of the bed. "Sorry."

"You're going to be okay, sir," Lip said, and Dick realised why the gentleness frightened him. It was the way Lip had talked to Buck, and to Malarkey, and to all those lambs lost in the slaughter around Bastonge.

He should tell Lip he was all right, that he didn't need to worry, but when he opened his mouth, he couldn't seem to make the words come. Lip was leaving anyway. He shut the door behind him, and left Dick sitting in the dim room.

* * *

Dick thought he might like to curl up on the bed for a while, but his boots were muddy, and taking them off was impossible. He was too tired to bend down and deal with bootlaces, too tired for sleep. And he needed to talk to Speirs. He thought Lip had gone to get him, so all Dick would have to do was sit here and wait.

His ass still hurt. He could feel the marks of the switch as lines of fire intercrossing a general ache. He didn't want to think about that, but sitting quietly in the dark, the sensations of the previous night drew him back, like a strong current pulling at his thoughts. He could feel Muldoon's hands all over his ass, touching and stroking him, curling around his balls. He could feel the broad hand pressing on his spine, holding him in place. He could feel the hand stroking his hair, ruffling through it as though petting a dog, and then tightening and pulling Dick down until he couldn't breathe. His body shook, and it felt like Muldoon was right there, the tips of his fingers rubbing his spit and come into Dick's hole. He was going to fuck Dick next time. He'd promised.

Dick heard voices, and the latch opening, and he realised that it must be Muldoon coming to take away that one last piece that was holding Dick together. He didn't try to run, he knew that he couldn't, but he couldn't find his legs to stand at attention either. He'd get in trouble for that; it would make everything worse. Dick pushed at the bed. He had to...

The door opened, and two men were arguing; neither of them was Muldoon.

"Look, Luz, just tell me what the fuck's going on. What's the matter with Speirs? Why isn't he at the CP?"

"No can do, sir." The door slammed shut, and someone turned on the light.

Dick flinched away, not looking. He had told Lip not to do this, that he couldn't do this. Nix shouldn't be here.

"No, no, no, no, no, no," Nix was saying. His words were slurred, and Dick could smell the stink of alcohol and perspiration on him from halfway across the room. "I am not doing this."

Feet scuffled against the floor, there was a thud.

"Sir," Luz said. "Sgt. Lipton says you stay and talk to him. You stay and talk to him. Lip's done fucking around."

"Fine. Get out. Guard the door if you want. What I have to say to Capt. Winters isn't for tender young ears."

Dick heard a sigh—Luz? Both of them?—and the door opened then slammed. Then nothing. He couldn't do this. He closed his eyes, but Muldoon's voice was in his head, _I expect you to keep your eyes open unless I tell you otherwise._ , so he opened them again and stared at the silver ewer on the side table. He felt his shoulders curling forward like he was about to take a hit. He should try... no they weren't being shelled. Would Nix hit him? He had every right to hit him.

Nothing happened. Dick stayed where he was. He could stay this way for a long time, he knew, until 2130, when he would have to go.

Nix sighed explosively and there was another thud, like he'd hit the door, then he demanded, "What the hell's the matter with you?" Dick didn't answer. He couldn't think of a thing to say, and words didn't seem to be coming to him any more anyway. "Jesus, you're shivering."

"Sorry," Dick muttered. He hadn't even realised that he was, but now that he did, it just made his body shake harder, shake so hard his teeth rattled. "Sorry."

"I..." Nix stopped. His feet scuffed the floor. "You can't do this to me, Winters. Always figured you be the last man in the goddam Airborne to crack up."

"Sorry." That seemed like the right thing to say, one little gleaming shard of truth in the darkness that was pulling him closer with every breath. "Sorry I got you killed."

"Jesus," Nix said again. Dick felt the bed shift, and then there was a blanket around his shoulders and an arm across the middle of his back. "I'm not dead."

"You will be. I can't talk to you."

Nix's arm weighed on him like an anchor, and Dick wished he could lean into the touch, like he used to. Nix's hand on his arm, their shoulders brushing together, their knees touching as they sat next to each other, those were the thousand small moments that had held Dick together over the years. More than the sex that came later, it was the like heart he'd recognised in OCS, who'd stuck with him through transfer and battle and the worst the German army could throw at them. It cut deepest that it wasn't the enemy he'd expected that had been the end of them. Dick knew he'd said too much already, and kept his mouth shut. Eventually Nix would either give up and leave, or he'd work out what had happened and then leave. Once he was gone, Dick could drift away again. He felt like the dark sky outside the C-47 was all around him now; the red light was on, and he'd be jumping soon.

"Nix," he said, and his voice sounded like a rusty hinge even though Dick was speaking as forcefully as he could, "you need to go now."

Nix didn't say anything for a long time, and Dick thought he was going to leave. Only Nix didn't move his arm either. In fact, he budged over until their hips were touching. "I don't think so," he said slowly, as if he were considering each word before he said it.

"Lew," Dick ground out, "just for once, do as you're damn told. I don't want you here." He hadn't meant to whine, but the words sounded plaintive and small even to him.

Nix's arm shifted, and maybe this was it, may he would finally save himself and do as Dick wanted, but then Dick felt Nix's hand on the back of his neck. Nix's skin was clammy, but somehow his touch was the warmest thing Dick had felt in days. "I didn't think you had it in you," Nix said, and now that he'd started, the words tumbled out. "Hell, I thought you'd actually agreed with that son of a bitch. You had me convinced that you were ashamed of me, that you believed him about me and David. I couldn't..."—his voice choked—"I couldn't stand it, Dick. Knowing you thought that I would do something like that. You were the one person who believed me, believed in me, and I thought you just dropped me like dirty laundry. I would have done anything for you. But you believing Muldoon, and not even asking my side, that was too much." His hand tightened over Dick's neck, and he paused to take a breath. "But that's not right is it? You actually lied to me. You, Captain Righteous of Lancaster County. And I was stupid enough to fall for it. And I left you all alone."

Dick didn't say anything. Nix had gotten far enough that he was only a few steps away from the whole story, and Dick wanted to keep his touch for as long as he could. When Nix left, he'd be falling again, and somehow he'd lost his nerve. He'd thought he could go forward with this, but Nix had had to come and remind him of all the things he'd used to have.

He could almost hear Nix's mind following back along the trail of the past few days, picking up patterns, making the connections that he'd been too angry to see. Dick knew the moment that he worked it out, Nix made a sound like he'd been punched in the ribs. He stood sharply and his boots thudded as he paced towards the door. "You..." he said, then stopped. Dick took a small, grim satisfaction in having gotten what he wanted at last. Nix would leave him now. He would stay away, and not get caught in the shrapnel as Dick crashed and burned. Then Nix was back, kneeling on the floor in front of Dick, dark hair blocking Dick's line of sight. He didn't touch Dick this time, but Dick could feel his whiskey-soaked breath. "I would like to know what happened after I left your billet three nights ago," he said. He spoke with the slow, deliberate calm of a drunk man pretending sobriety, or of someone who was boiling with rage yet determined not to explode.

He'd already figured it out, and Dick didn't say anything. His head was pounding, and he'd lost the use of words. Exhaustion overtook him, but he couldn't move. He felt distantly that if he stayed perfectly still, kept his eyes open, and let the world flow around him, that he might get through unnoticed. He couldn't look at Nix. Even after everything he'd been though, he didn't have the heart to see the disgust on Nix's face as he worked out what had happened that night.

"Jesus Christ," Nix breathed. "Oh, Sweet Jesus. How could I have let that happen?" And then, impossibly, unbearably, Nix started to cry. He was drunk; he was miserable, and it came in retching, ugly sobs, like Dick hadn't cried since he was a child, if ever.

Dick couldn't stand it. Each time Nix's shoulders shook and his breath choked off, it sent a sympathetic jolt through Dick's chest, and everything already hurt too much. "Nix," he said. When Nix didn't hear, Dick tore his gaze away from Speirs' pilfered silver down to where Nix knelt curled in on himself on the floor. Dick reached out slowly, and laid his hand on Nix's hair. Nix twitched, but didn't pull away. "Nix," he tried again. "You need to let this be. I can handle it."

The next sob squeaked into a laugh, and Nix looked up. Their eyes met, and Dick felt as if a hand were clenching around his heart. "Sure," Nix said, voice choked with bitterness and grief. "You've been doing a fine job of that."

"Nix..." Dick said, but he trailed off. Nix tears had shocked something loose inside him, and if his thoughts were still caught in an undertow, he felt like he might have hold of a line thrown from the shore. Dick cleared his throat and tried to pull himself together. He ran a hand through his hair and realised his helmet was gone. Had he left it in the aid station? It didn't matter now. "Lew," he said, starting again, "There's nothing you can do except stay away from me. I'm making the calls I have to to keep us safe. You just have to keep your head down and not do anything stupid before Strayer gets back."

Dick apparently wasn't that great at reassurance, because Nix covered his mouth with both hands and stared at Dick with wet, bloodshot eyes. The brown seemed impossibly vivid in the dim light, and Dick had to force himself not to lean in and kiss Nix until he stopped hurting. "And what are you going to be doing, Dick?" Nix demanded.

"Whatever I have to," Dick said, and then worked out that he'd lost track of the conversation, because Nix's eyes were narrowing, and his hands had balled into fists. "I mean..."

"Because I thought you meant that you and he... that night, and then..." Nix hesitated. Neither of them wanted to put a name to it, it seemed. "And then that was it, but that's not it, is it?"

"Do you really want to know, Lewis?" Dick asked heavily. He knew that he didn't want to talk about it. Nix did.

"You swapped billets with Davidson. I thought you were avoiding me, but..."

Nix bolted to his feet, swayed slightly, righted himself, and took a step towards the wall. "I am going to kill him."

"Nix! Stop!" Dick snapped. He pushed himself up, steadying against the wall when his knees wobbled, and forced his voice to a tight, urgent whisper. "You cannot walk out there and murder a ranking officer. We're at war. Sink will have you shot." Dick felt a twist in his chest at the idea of what Nix was offering, something he himself hadn't even considered, but he couldn't let it happen. "They kill you, and everything I did is for nothing, and I'd..." he stopped before saying that he'd be all alone, but they both knew it was the truth. "Is that what you want?"

"No," Nix snarled, he was furious, and Dick didn't think it was just aimed at Muldoon, but he'd stopped before opening the door. "I didn't want any of this. I didn't ask you to... to..."

"Sell myself?" Dick asked. Nix's anger had been oddly clarifying. In the past hour, Dick's emotions had careened across the map, but when he considered the deal he'd made, he realised that nothing had changed. "No, you didn't, but you weren't the one he asked, and I didn't have a lot of options at the time. You know what would have happened if he'd turned us in to the MPs."

"Jesus, Dick" Nix shoulders slumped and he leaned his forehead against the wall. "I never would have left if I'd known, I swear to God. I thought he was a bully, not a sadist."

"It's not..." Dick stopped when he realised that he didn't actually have an sop to offer Nix. Whatever he was imaging, the reality of being at Muldoon's mercy was probably worse. Dick was still faced with returning to that room again and again, until Muldoon had used him to live out his every fantasy. "I didn't want you to know," he concluded. He leaned against the wall, and reached out a hand to rest his fingertips on Nix's shoulder blade. "I'll be fine."

Nix's shoulders shook under Dick's touch, and Dick could tell if he was laughing or crying again. "Yeah, you looked just peachy when I came in."

He had a point there. They were already an hour late briefing Speirs, and Zielinski had to be wondering where Dick was. "All right, maybe I won't be fine, but I'll survive, and so will you. So will the men. That's what matters."

"Yeah," Nix muttered, then, "God. I need to think. You should have told me. I could have..."

"Gone on an ill-conceived quest to murder Muldoon two days ago instead of today?" Dick asked. He patted Nix's back fondly. "Not that I don't appreciate the thought, Lewis, but I didn't talk to you in the first place for a reason."

"I could have thought of something else!"

"Such as?"

"I don't know!" Nix spun around and grabbed Dick's arms, then let go as if he'd been burned when Dick flinched away. "I haven't had a chance to think of it," he finished tiredly.

Dick sighed and shuffled closer to Nix, wanting to show him that he wasn't afraid of him. "I don't blame you, Lew," he said.

"How wonderful of you," Nix said. He rubbed his face with both palms and then shook his head sharply. "Listen. I am going to think of a way out of this, Dick. I promise."

"Promise me something else?" Dick asked; he moved in another inch and their chests were touching. Nix tipped his head back to look him in the eyes, and if Dick had leaned in just slightly, they could have kissed.

"Anything," Nix breathed.

"Promise me that you won't do anything before talking to me first."

Nix looked hurt, but he nodded. "Yeah, all right. How long do I have?"

Dick tried to work out what that meant. "I've got to talk to Speirs about the patrol, and then I'll be in my office. He said he was watching us, and that he..."—that he wouldn't share, but he couldn't say that—"I don't think we should be seen together." He tried to work out when they could slide together without Muldoon finding out, and going after Nix. They could be risking the agreement just by meeting right now. "Try 1700, here?"

"No, you idiot. How long do I have before you... uh, you see Muldoon?"

"Oh. That." Dick didn't know how to tell Nix that he didn't expect to be saved at all, and certainly not in the next twelve hours. "It doesn't matter, Nix."

Standing this close, he could hear Nix's teeth grind as he clenched his jaw. "It matters to me," he snapped. "You think I could live with myself, knowing that you... Dammit, Dick. How long do I have?"

Dick shook his head. "It doesn't matter," he said again. "He can't... I've already been..." He cupped the back of Nix's neck, the way he used to before he kissed him. "It's too late to save me, Nix."

Nix closed his eyes and let his head fall forward against Dick's shoulder. They stood like that for a long time, just breathing together. 

Dick felt a profound gratitude, something almost like grace rising in him as he stood feeling the warmth of Nix's body against his. He hadn't thought that they would ever touch like this again. He hadn't imagined that Nix would be able to stand to look at him, whether he knew the truth or not. These few moments together felt like a gift unlooked for, perhaps a final gift even.

"Don't worry about me, Lew," he said into Nix's ear before he pulled away. Dick squared his shoulders, tugged his jacket straight, and said, "I'm going to brief the men. Remember your promise."

Nix too seemed to draw in on himself. He nodded shortly and stepped away. "Yeah, I will." He waited while Dick left, so they wouldn't be seen leaving together.

Luz was waiting outside, with Dick's helmet, thank God, and Dick wondered what the he thought of the whole thing. He didn't ask, and for once Luz didn't volunteer his opinion.


	5. Chapter 5

It was almost noon by the time Dick made it to Easy's CP. He'd lost a whole morning, but he couldn't find it in himself to regret it. His hands still shook with fatigue, and he didn't think he'd ever again be as warm as he'd felt when Nix was leaning against him while their chests rose and fell as one, but just talking to Nix—knowing that he cared what happened to Dick—that gave him the strength to pull himself together and look after his men.

Lip was at the CP already, having gotten the required maps from regiment, and had an outline of the plan worked out with with Speirs. They were leaving at midnight, with boats Lip had scrounged form somewhere, and were scouting up to a suspected OP, and if possible trying to spike the rail gun.

Another junior officer had arrived from West Point, and of course wanted to go, but Dick thought of the face that had almost been Nix's that morning, and let Speirs tell him no, and then denied all appeals.

The men weren't happy to be sent, they wanted to be off the line, but Dick couldn't help that. "Hold in for another few days," he said in a strange echo of his words to Nix. "Don't take any risks, come back as soon as you can." Dick thought he heard Cobb mutter something about how they could just not go across the river in the first place, but he ignored that and wished them all good luck.

As the squad left for their preparations, Lip caught Dick's eye and raised an eyebrow in question. Dick flashed him a small thumbs up tried to look steady on his feet.

Lip looked sceptical, pursing his lips as he studied Dick, then shook his head as if writing him off as too stupid to come out of the rain. Dick sighed. He had to admit that there was a certain gratification in having half the battalion worrying after him, but he'd never wanted to put that kind of stress on his men. He was the one who was supposed to be looking after them. "Thank you, Carwood," he said. "That will be all."

Lip saluted and left to follow the men, giving Dick a few minutes alone in the ruined, opulent rooms Speirs had secured as his CP.

With the patrol as taken care of as it could be, Dick turned his thoughts to worrying about Nix, specifically to worrying about what Nix would do. He didn't think that he would break his promise, but Dick had a feeling that if he put Nix and Muldoon in a room together, and added a little—or a lot—of the old Vat 69, all bets would be off. If Nix wanted to keep his position as Regimental S3, he couldn't keep avoiding the commander of 2nd Battalion. The situation had been explosive enough before, when Nix's rage was mostly directed at a combination of Dick and himself. With his mind boiling and grinding away at the problem of how to get rid of Muldoon, Dick had to worry that he'd throw it all away for a moment's satisfaction. If Dick could have taken Nix's bullets away like he had Liebgott's when he'd entrusted him with the SS prisoners, he would have.

Dick would have to try to make the proposed meeting that evening, and see if he couldn't bleed Nix's momentum before he called in the Air Corps to carpet bomb Muldoon's house from nineteen thousand feet.

Then Dick would have to face going back to Muldoon that evening. In some respects, the prospect weighed more lightly on him. Knowing that another human soul understood what he was about to do, and gave a damn about him anyway, went a long way toward making Dick feel like more than a plaything for Muldoon to use and discard. Nix had given him a sliver of hope. Not that he might escape, but that there might be something worth surviving for after the fact—that it mattered to someone that Dick survived, even if it wasn't as the same man he'd been before.

But Dick couldn't imagine what it would be like to endure Muldoon's hands on him knowing that Nix knew what was happening. Maybe that was why he'd refused to tell Nix the time: so that he could pretend a strange kind of autonomy from the rest of the world. What Muldoon did to him was a thing of its own time and place, and not anchored by Nix worrying about him as it was happening, and Dick worrying that Nix would burst in and shoot Muldoon between the eyes and damn them both. He didn't want Nix thinking about Dick being degraded and humiliated, or even about someone else touching Dick with an intimacy—no matter how perverted the form—that had used to be only offered to Nix. Before, Dick had had the slender thread of satisfaction that his shame was his alone.

Dick was afraid that Nix would want to know the details of what happened, or that not knowing would lead to his imagination burning him up. Dick couldn't see any good coming from from telling Nix that he'd knelt there and sucked Muldoon off and then let himself be spanked and fondled, and had just taken it—that the way his body had writhed had turned Muldoon on. Even imagining it burned a line of disgust too wide for Dick to see past. Nix couldn't know that and look him in the eye again, let alone touch him.

It was odd how much angrier Nix was, or, more precisely, how little anger Dick had felt. He'd hated Muldoon, and hated what Muldoon made him feel, but it had been in the same way he'd hated the winter and lack of shelter in the Ardennes. The incandescent rage that he'd seen in Nix's eyes hadn't been there. Maybe it should have been.

Dick stared out the CP's window, through the jumble of houses, to the roofs on the far side of the river. Somewhere over there, a young German officer was staring back this way, wondering when his orders would come and how long his men would be able to hold out when the enemy crossed the river. Dick felt a lot more kinship with his imaginary officer than he did with his own CO. He shook his head and left, nodding to Luz and Lipton as he passed them smoking on the step.

When Dick got back to his office, his desk was suspiciously clear. When he asked Zielinski if there was anything he should look at or sign off on, his orderly said something vague about there not being anything that needed the captain's attention right away. Then he flushed to the tips of his jug-handle ears, and shuffled backwards out of the office. Dick hoped the kid never tried to play poker, but he was grateful for the respite. Had it come down from Sink? Or up from someone in the companies? He was too tired to question it, and leaned forward on his folded arms and fell asleep on his desk.

* * *

Zielinski woke Dick three whole hours later, offering a pot of coffee and telling him that he shouldn't forget his meeting with Captain Speirs. Rubbing his eyes, Dick tried to assess what he felt. Some of the ache had left his muscles, and he'd either grown inured to the stinging lines left by the switch or they'd faded some, but his head felt half stuffed with cotton, and his eyes ached. He realised that he hadn't shaved yet that day, and decided that he had time to go back to his billet before he met Nix at Speirs' room. The ritual always seemed to clear his head, and it would reassure the men.

As he walked back through the town, he considered how alarming his actions in the aid station must have been. No wonder someone had called Lip. Dick regretted that he'd let himself slide so far. It was his golden responsibility to protect his men, and he'd been failing that duty. He thought again of the officer's manual: _A leader should be dignified. Dignity implies a state of being worthy or honourable. It requires the control of one's actions and emotions._ Muldoon may have hammered the words into knifes and used it to slice Dick to the bone, but dictum itself wasn't at fault. If they were all going to survive Haguenau, Dick need to hold onto both is dignity and his emotions.

The coffee followed by a brisk walk through cold and a shave combined to clear Dick's head, and he felt able to breathe again. He looked in the mirror and saw someone who maybe wasn't just hanging on to his sanity by his fingernails. Good. That would help convince both Nix and Lipton to listen to him.

Dick was pulling on his gloves on the way out when he ran into Muldoon in the hall.

"I've been looking for you, son," Muldoon said. His voice was light and free of recrimination, but Dick felt the hairs on the back of his neck rise. There was no room to manoeuvrer in that narrow hall, and Dick's mind instantly returned to the first night in the billet, and feel of a steel trap snapping shut.

"I've been in my office, sir," he answered.

Muldoon smiled. "Easy's first sergeant said you were there; your orderly said you were at D Company CP; Captain McMillan said you were at the OP across from the launch point; The corporal at OP2 hadn't seen you all day, but thought you were in your office."

"You must have just missed me, sir," Dick said, wondering at the trail of misinformation. Was the whole battalion involved in something, or did no one know where he was? He wouldn't lay odds either way. "Can I do something for you?"

"Yes, Captain, you can." Muldoon took a step closer, and Dick locked his knees to keep from following his immediate instinct and backing into the wall. It would be fine. Muldoon wouldn't do anything to him in an unlocked entryway in the middle of the day. "I want a briefing on Captain Speirs' plan for tonight's patrol. Col. Sink is anticipates it being more successful than D Company's effort."

Dick let out a breath and filled Muldoon in on what he and Speirs had laid out. He didn't mention the young second lieutenant's request to accompany the patrol, or Dick's refusal. He'd seen enough boys die that week, and for the rest of his life.

He couldn't tell if Muldoon was pleased or not, but he nodded seriously when Dick concluded. "Word is we'll be pulled off the line day after tomorrow," he said. "Moving to reserve while 1st Battalion takes out place."

That word had been around for a while, but Dick hadn't heard anything that specific, just that it would be soon. "That's good to hear, sir," he said. "Second Battalion has been active for eight weeks, with little or no relief." How any of them were still sane was something of a miracle.

"I understand that, son," Muldoon said, and Dick felt a flash of longing to serve under the officer that everyone else seemed to think Muldoon was. He'd never been able to lean on Strayer because Strayer was so rarely there, and now he had to second guess everything Muldoon said or did. What would it be like to be the XO of a man he trusted to be there and to make the right call? "Are you looking forward to reserve position?"

"The men need to rest," Dick answered, not sure what to say of himself. "I'll be glad for their sake."

"Well have more time together." Muldoon's hand traced the outer seam of Dick's pants up to his belt, and circled to cup his ass. He didn't squeeze, just held his hand there possessively.

Dick stood absolutely still, refusing to react. "Until Col. Strayer returns to duty, and you go back to the 17th," he said.

Muldoon considered that, and Dick thought he might say something to imply that he was extending the terms of their deal, but then he nodded, and said amiably, "Until Strayer's back, though we may run into each other again. It's a small theatre." He squeezed lightly, and Dick bit the inside of his lip to keep from wincing. Muldoon's thumb was right on one of the switch marks, and they hadn't faded after all. Muldoon, watching his reaction, smiled and added. "I've told Col. Sink that I'd like to see the men off tonight. Zero hundred hours, you said?"

"Yes, sir," Dick said. They would have to go down together, after Muldoon was finished him. "Is that all, sir?"

"It is. Carry on, Captain." Muldoon stepped back, giving Dick a clear exit.

* * *

Dick was already late for his meeting with Nix, and had to force himself to neither flee his billet nor run across town. He still had no idea of Muldoon could make good on his promise to watch Dick, and there were enough new officers around that he couldn't count on trusting even his own battalion.

By the time he slipped into Speirs' billet, Nix was pacing and looking about ready to call out a search party. He hadn't shaved since that morning at the bell tower, but he reeked less of whiskey and unwashed clothes, and he had a crisp new collar. His eyes were bright with an enthusiasm that bordered on frightening.

"I got held up," Dick said, not wanting to mention by whom.

Nix either didn't catch the omission, or didn't care. "So," he said, "I have a plan."

Dick dropped to sit on Speirs' bed. Just watching Nix pace was making him tired, and his stomach hadn't settled from letting Muldoon touch him like that when anyone could have walked in. "Oh, yeah. And what's that?" Dick asked, though he suspected it wasn't notably different in outline from Nix's initial plan.

"I'm going to kill him."

And there it was. Nix said the words flatly, the his previous rage honed into deadly purpose, but Dick wished he could be more sure sure it had also been honed into attention to detail. He sighed and flopped back onto the bed.

"You can't think he deserves to live," Nix demanded, outrage edging into his previous calm.

Dick thought about it. He was a religious man, who generally considered that judgement lay in God's hands. He had also taken lives in the name of his country, and to defeat evil, and to protect his men. Would killing Muldoon in cold blood put more of a scar on his soul than shooting German boys in a field? "No," he said finally, "I don't think I'd have a problem killing him. But, Lewis,"—he pushed himself up on his elbows so he could look Nix in the eye—"it's too big a risk. I won't see you shot for treason because you... you wanted to save what's left of my virtue."

"Virtue?" Nix snapped, and Dick thought he'd chase that one right into the bier patch, but he stopped himself. "Well how about the next guy's 'virtue'?" he demanded, back onto what seemed to be a preplanned argument. "That was a smooth con he just pulled: having the key, knowing when to walk in, and exactly how far he could push you—making sure you didn't talk to me,. He's done this before. He's going to do it again."

Dick hadn't even thought of that. He'd been so twisted up that he'd hardly been able to think at all. Now, the notion of a trail of broken young men stretching out on either side of Muldoon made him ashamed of his own short-sightedness. Then he thought of one young man in particular. "Nix," Dick asked carefully, "what did happen at Yale. Did Muldoon threaten you? Or this other boy, David? Lew, he didn't... not to you?"

Nix dropped to bed beside Dick, close enough that their hips and shoulders touched, and for a moment Dick wished that he could close his eyes and pretend that this was any evening off, and that they were just relaxing together like they'd used to.

"It wasn't like that," Nix said. "You think I'd have left you alone with him for a second, if it had been like that? I'd have died first!"

"All right, Nix," Dick told him, and set aside his relief in the face of concern for what it had been like.

Nix paused, and when Dick glanced his way, his mouth twisted in a frown at the memory. Finally, he said, "David was a freshman when I was a senior, we went to a few games together, and one thing led to et cetera and so on and so forth. We were stupid kids. There were letters. Someone else saw us. It got ugly." Now Nix was staring at the wall like he could see straight through it to the Ivy League. "Muldoon was the ROTC commandant, and a drinking buddy of dad's and he was supposed to, I don't know, make it go away. But by the time he was done with the story, I'd seduced an innocent young man—fresh from the bosom of his family—into a life of drink and depravity. David transferred to Berkeley, I guess because there's no universities in Alaska, and Dad had to buy a gym or something so that I could graduate. Only it seemed like everyone ended up knowing good old Chet's version of the story by the end. Funny how that turned out. By then there was about to be a war on, so I did what every upstanding young man with a problem at home did, and joined the army. I thought Muldoon was a snake and an opportunist, and I hated his guts, but this? I really am going to kill him."

Dick thought about how that fit with Muldoon's hints that he could ruin Nix if he wanted to, shut his eyes for a moment. His shot in the dark to push Nix away might as well have been with live ammunition. He didn't know if he could have found anything worse to say. "Do you have a plan?" Dick asked.

That pulled Nix back into the moment, and he looked at Dick with some surprise. "Really?"

"I didn't say yes." But he might as well have, and Nix knew it.

"Well, since he's not going to lead the charge into battle so I can lob a grenade at him, and he's not likely to follow me into the woods where we could run into a kraut patrol so I can't just shoot him in the head and dump his body in the Moder River, I was thinking how unfortunate it would be if a stray shell happened to blow up his house."

Dick considered that. "It's pretty far back from the river, right over the rise. Funny kind of shell that no one hears coming," he commented.

"If it happened in the middle of the covering fire for tonight's op, no one would know the difference. If you want to be doubly sure, clock him on the head next time he asks you to come up and see him. I got a line on enough TNT for the roof to make an autopsy a formality. Nice directed charge, no point waking the neighbours."

He really had thought that out. Too bad. Dick sighed. He'd almost started hoping that this would be over. "He told Sink he'd see the patrol from Easy off. He'll probably stay in the OP the whole time."

"Dammit," Nix muttered. "He picks now to be conscientious?" He looked sideways at Dick. "I don't suppose you could just shoot him and tell Sink he changed his mind, then we could blow the roof."

"I promise to say that I acted alone and on my own behalf at my court martial," Dick answered dryly, then wondered if there wasn't the kernel of an idea in that: just kill Muldoon himself in plain sight and have done. It would be over then, either by his own hand or by court martial and firing squad. All those future young men would be spared, and Dick wouldn't have to struggle to look himself in the eye every morning. Only what would Sink tell Dick's parents about what he'd done, and what would happen to 2nd Battalion?

Nix laughed. "Good, I wouldn't want to get tarred with thinking of a plan like that. It'd ruin my reputation. Damn. It's war. You'd think there'd be a way to get a man dead."

Dick considered the hierarchy of who he would have liked to see survive their battles, and who had actually survived, and the fairness of love and war. "You'd think," he said. Then he leaned over and rested his head on Nix's shoulder. "Thank you, Lew."

"For what? I've done nothing but screw this up worse. Maybe if I swam across the river with a rifle..."

"For trying," Dick said, ignoring that bit of lunacy. He entwined his fingers with Nix's and laid them both palm up on his knee.

"For Christ's sake, Dick," Nix's voice was heave and choked, "then stop sounding like you've given up. We're going to figure this out. I'm not letting you spend one more minute with that sadistic son of a bitch."

Dick glanced at his watch: 1730. Four hours was not a lot of time to plan an assassination on the fly, at least not one that wasn't a kamikaze run. "You might have to," he said. He squeezed Nix's hand. "I don't blame you for any of this," he added, and he hated how much it sounded like a last confession before the gallows.

"I do," Nix told him. "I'm the operations officer. I should have seen this coming, and I should be able to fucking stop it." He straightened suddenly, and Dick lifted his head to catch his expression: pale, drawn, and more acutely afraid then it had been since the night before D-Day. "I... uh... I could go in your place. I'm sure Muldoon would enjoy that."

"Absolutely not!" Dick snapped. He forced his voice down before he continued, "Not on your life, Nix. Or on mine. Please don't even think about asking." Bad enough that Nix had to live with the idea of what Muldoon might or might not be doing, but for Dick to sit up knowing exactly what humiliations Nix was going through, just to save Dick more of the same? It was impossible. "It's already done, to me I mean," Dick persisted. He slid off the bed to kneel in front of Nix, taking both his hands in his, and looking up into his face. "I'm fine; even if I have to go back in there, I know I'll make it." And if he didn't, he needed at least one of them to stay sane.

"And I won't?" Nix asked, but the fight had gone out of him. The both knew the answer to that; Dick was just a plaything, a way to pass the time; with Nix; it would be horribly personal. "Christ, okay, go get shot in the leg again; it was fine the first time."

Dick relaxed and led his forehead rest of Nix's knees. "It makes a difference, you know," he said, "having you here."

"So much for Currahee," Nix said.

"We've never stood alone, you and me," Dick answered, and he felt his lips curl up into a small smile. He wanted to say that it made even more of a difference to know that Nix didn't see him as somehow damaged beyond repair, but he didn't know if that was true or not, and he was afraid to ask.

"Dammit," Nix sighed, and he pulled one hand away to stroke Dick's hair back from where it had fallen across his forehead. Dick flinched at the touch, feeling for a moment Muldoon's hand, and hearing his voice calmly reading out army policies. It came too close to his last thought, and he kept his head down instead of checking Nix's reaction. "Dammit," Nix muttered again. "I should just go and shoot the bastard. How hard can hiding a body be?"

"You keep working on that," Dick said. "I've got to get back to my office." He couldn't ask Zielinski to cover for him twice in one day.

"Right," Nix said. Neither of them moved.

Dick would have been utterly content to kneel there touching Nix for the rest of his life, but he knew he couldn't. Finally, he lifted his head and kissed Nix's knuckles, first one hand and then the other. "I've got to go," he repeated, but this time he stood, then pulled Nix up after him.

It was one of the most difficult things he'd ever done to pull their hands apart and step away, leaving Nix alone in Speirs' billet.

"Good luck," Nix said just before the door closed, and Dick pretended not to hear him slumping back onto the bed.

* * *

Dick spent the walk back to Battalion CP enumerating his bad decisions. If only he'd been smart enough to think of a way out of Muldoon's blackmail in the first place. If only Dick hadn't left Nix out in the cold two days ago, had talked to him instead. If only he'd been able to come up with a more workable plan just now. He'd directed a platoon, and then a company, and now a battalion into battle, won medals for his courage and initiative. How the hell did he have the steel jaws of a trap around his leg now? Killing one more man, wasn't much on top of all the other blood on Dick's hands. If only he could make sure it was just the one man, and not Nix as well. He thought again about a gun in his hand, and ending it all for both Muldoon and himself, but that too was impossible. Knowing that Dick had thrown his life away like that would destroy Nix just as surely as prison. After that, neither of them would be there for 2nd Battalion.

The few hours of sleep at his desk hadn't been enough to relieve the months of care, and Dick's feet felt heavy as he made his across town to the CP. He tried to buck himself up by remembering that he wasn't in any worse position than he'd been in the night before—rather better for knowing that Nix didn't despise him—but he couldn't make the thought stick. There's been that glimmer of hope when he'd thought Nix had a plan, the phone ringing while he was in the electric chair. Only instead of a pardon, he'd just gotten a heartfelt farewell. The wait for the first sparks was even harder now, because he was less hardened to it. He'd told Nix it didn't matter any more what Muldoon did to him, but as he walked through the muddy, half-frozen streets of Haguenau, he realised that that wasn't true.

He wasn't going to let his guard down again, and assume that Muldoon couldn't find another deeper way to hurt him. Nix was right. The man was a sadist, and someone should take him out before he hurt anyone else. He thought of Shifty and his perfect aim, then shook his head. Having Nix involved was bad enough.

Lipton was waiting in his office when Dick got back. Somewhere in the day, he'd gotten a shower, but was still coughing and looking like he hadn't slept since Market Garden.

"You should sack out, Lip," Dick said, touching his shoulder gently.

"That's what Capt. Speirs keeps saying," Lip said, a smile warming his face. "I'm not an officer yet, can't spend the day sleeping." He closed the door behind him, shutting Zielinski out.

Dick smiled back, then grimaced at the twin reminders that he had been sleeping half the day, and that he planned to bury Lip's commission until they were clear of Muldoon. "I was just going down for another nap," he joked, though in truth he felt like he could use one, especially seeing that all the paperwork Zielinski had withheld was now sitting in neat piles across his desk, "but I'll make time for you."

Lip crossed to sit in front of him, stretching out his legs. "Honestly," he said, "I'm checking up on you. You had us worried this morning." The use of the first person plural was strategic, carefully aimed to make sure that Dick had consider all his men in his plans to crack up. Or to at least warn them.

"I appreciated your help at the aid station," Dick said. He rubbed a hand over his mouth and tried to think of what to say. "For sending Luz to find Capt. Nixon, too. I think... I was close to falling, Carwood, so close I scared myself pretty badly. I'm sorry. You've lost too many officers."

"None like you," Lip said with a sincerity that made Dick glance down at his desk while his cheeks heated slightly. "Second Battalion needs you, sir."

Not as much as Dick needed them, but he'd known that for a long time. "Thank you," he said. "Look, pass the word around that I was having a bad morning—Not enough sleep. Too long in the woods. Whatever—But that I'm feeling better now. Tell them we're being pulled off the line in a few days, and we all have to hold it together."

Again he felt like Lip was piercing right through to his soul with that long, searching look, but then he nodded and pushed himself back to his feet. "That's good to hear, sir. I think the boys will be happy to hear it too."

They exchanged salutes, and Dick said a quiet prayer of thanks for the surviving Toccoa noncoms in general and Lipton especially. What would he do without them? Dick took a sharp breath, and wondered what he would do if he found out that Muldoon was preying on Lipton, or Martin, or one of the men. _Just shoot him in the head and dump his body in the Moder River,_ Nix had said. Dick had to admit that his motivation to do just that was growing by the minute.

He glanced at his watch and decided to crawl through paperwork until it was time. Maybe there would be something in there to inspire him to an assassination plan.

* * *

Nothing did. Dick had considered what little he knew of poisons, and jeeps turning over, and tripping on unexploded shells, but he couldn't work out anything that he either understood well enough to be sure of, or that didn't rely on Muldoon trusting him or Nix enough to follow them into potential danger. If Muldoon was that stupid, one of his previous victims probably would have gotten him, and spared Dick a lot of pain and trouble.

He went straight from his office to Muldoon's billet, pausing at his own long enough to strip off his overcoat and scarf. He didn't know how his newfound anger was going to set off the humiliation and fear he usually found in the rooms above. He thought it would either save him—giving him something to hang onto in the dark—or boil over into something stupid that would damn them all. He tried to recall how he'd gotten though standing at attention and doing nothing while Sobel tore apart some trooper who hadn't done anything wrong, but his heart was pounding too hard to think.

Muldoon was sitting in that wing-backed chair again, and Dick wondered if all he was in for was sucking him off. Then he saw the quilt and bolster on the solid wooden table at the back of the sitting room, and realised that Muldoon would more likely be keeping his promise of the night before.

"You look tired, son," Muldoon said after making Dick stand by the door for a minute or so.

"Sir," Dick answered. He was staring at the clock again, trying to slow his heart to match the second hand's steady tick. He needed to get a hold of himself. What if he did just strangle Muldoon right here? Could he do it? Muldoon was a big man, and strong, and would necessarily do a lot of damage on the way down.

"Well," Muldoon said, and pushed himself out of the chair. He crossed to Dick and cupped the side of his neck to tilt his head, before leaning in the last few inches and kissing him on the lips. It was barely a kiss, more a brush of lips, but Dick gasped at the unexpected intimacy. Muldoon backed off enough to watch Dick's reaction, and Dick forced his face back into its military mask. "Well," Muldoon repeated, and kissed Dick harder this time.

Dick felt his tongue against his lips, and then his teeth on Dick's lower lip. He didn't respond, but this was closer to anything he'd done or wanted to do with Nix, and he had to turn his thoughts sharply away from any comparison. Muldoon's thumb slid to the to corner of his jaw and pushed sharp and sudden, forcing Dick's jaw open. Then his tongue was in Dick's mouth, running along the inside of his teeth and pressing against his own. Dick felt his breath coming fast through his nose, and forced back the urge to bite. The building tension in Dick's body seemed to urge Muldoon forward; he moaned against Dick's mouth and squeezed the back of his neck to force them closer. His mouth was hot and sloppy, and the kiss didn't seem like it would ever end.

When he finally pulled away, Dick had to take deep steady breaths, to push back the shock of it. He'd been expecting his body to be used like a plaything not like a lover, and his thoughts reeled to catch up with what Muldoon was planning. He wanted to wipe the spittle of his mouth, but made himself remain at attention while Muldoon looked him over.

"You've been a good boy," Muldoon said, and Dick felt the hair rising on the back of his neck at what that could mean. "I thought I'd give you a choice of what we did together tonight. Would you like that, son?"

Dick licked his lips before saying, "That would depend on what the choices are, sir."

Muldoon laughed indulgently and patted the side of Dick's cheek. "The first choice is to strip and lie back on that table, and then I'll fuck you. You won't have to do anything, just keep your legs open and watch me. I like to take it slow on my first time, don't you?" When Dick didn't answer, Muldoon continued unperturbed. "On the other hand, you could tell me exactly what you and Lewie did the first time you had an evening together, and then you and I could do that. You would have to be a little more active for that, but of course it wouldn't be something you hadn't already done. What do you think, son?"

He moved back half a step, and waited for Dick's reply.

Images of that first night in Paris flashed through Dick's mind before he could make himself think of something else: Nix tearing his clothes off and touching every part of him as they kissed; Dick's mouth on his cock while Nix writhed under him; Dick thrusting between Nix's thighs and coming across his stomach. They'd laughed, and held each other, and been so damn glad to be alive and to have a roof over their heads. There was no way that Muldoon would touch a second of that night.

Dick slid off his suspenders and started yanking his shirt out of his pants while he unbuttoned it. His hands were shaking with anger, and he knew for sure now that emotion wasn't going to be a refuge. He focused on undoing his belt and fly so that he wouldn't strike out. He had to steady himself. He didn't want Muldoon to see how raw his emotions were. He slowed as he unlaced his boots, working deliberately, ignoring how close Muldoon was standing. When he had everything off and folded over the side table, Dick crossed to the table and sat on the edge. He hadn't said a word to Muldoon since he'd started to strip, and hoped not to have to the rest of the night.

"Now lie back, son," Muldoon said. He fished a small tube out of his pocket, something from the aid station maybe, and twisted off the cap to squeeze it on his fingers.

When Dick didn't comply, Muldoon put a hand on the centre of Dick's chest and pushed him flat on his back. The bolster kept his head propped up so that Dick ended up looking down along his own chest to where Muldoon was standing between his legs as they dangled off the table. It felt a little like being given a physical, only instead of mild embarrassment in the face of a doctor, Dick could feel the pulse pounding in his throat. His headache was edging back in and he closed his eyes against it, trying to clear his mind.

"You will keep your eyes on me at all times, Captain," Muldoon snapped. He hooked his left hand under Dick's knee and hiked it up, spreading Dick's legs as he closed in. Instead of touching Dick's hole, he traced the welts left by the switch leaving a slick trail as his fingers moved back and forth across Dick's ass. "I'd have liked to have branded you," he said, "but this will do for now. I can give you a reminder later, if I think you need one."

The inside of Dick's thighs itched against Muldoon's wool uniform, and his knee flexed against the hard grip of Muldoon's fingers under it. He couldn't seem to relax, though he knew this would go hard if he didn't. A small part of him wanted it to hurt: an incorporated punishment for allowing this to happen to him, a reminder of who Dick wasn't letting touch him. He hadn't decided if he'd ever let even someone he trust about do this to him, had wanted to take it slow, somewhere safe if he did. Too late.

When Muldoon touched his hole, Dick's whole body flinched, and he had to struggle not to look away. 

The fingers stayed at his entrance, as Muldoon watched Dick's expression. He seemed to take some satisfaction from watching Dick's efforts at control, and he waited until Dick got his mask back in place before pushing a finger into him as far as the first knuckle.

Dick hissed a breath in through gritted teeth. It didn't hurt exactly, but it felt completely wrong and strange. He hated the vulnerability of being spread out like a meal in front of Muldoon, and the way Muldoon's slightest touch could wring a reaction from him. When Muldoon suddenly jammed a second finger beside the first and drove them both as deep as they would go, Dick thrashed his head back at the suddenness of the intrusion, and the slow burn of pain the followed it. He tried to clamp down, body instinctively rejecting what was being done to it.

"Son, look at me. No, look at me now," Muldoon insisted, "if you don't manage to relax, I'm going to rip you up pretty bad. Understood?"

"Understood, sir." Dick met Muldoon's eyes and took one deep breath after another, his breath hitched a little, and he hated the way Muldoon's lips twitched up at that. Muldoon just waited, holding steady until Dick had control of himself again and stopped trying to push him out. Thinking of the comparison to a physical, he tried to imagine that this was some kind of unpleasant procedure that he just had to get through. He had to remember why he was doing this: to keep Nix safe, no matter if Nix wanted it or not. Not long ago, Dick had wondered if there could be any way to repay Nix for joining up for him and sticking with him through the war, and this seemed like maybe this was it. He focused on each breath as it came, and promised that if he made it through this, he was going to kill this bastard like Nix had said he should.

When Dick had stilled, Muldoon curled his fingers inside his ass, pulling them back and forth slightly until Dick stopped reacting to that too. He was so damnably patient, that it didn't feel human. When he could slide in and out without pausing—whatever the medical gel was making everything slippery and easy—Muldoon squeezed Dick's knee before pulling his fingers out and stepping back.

His hands were slippery, and at first he fumbled with his fly before sighing and wiping his fingers on Dick's thigh. He was already hard, and the sight of his cock sticking out from his pants reminded Dick of what it had felt like in his mouth, how it had filled him up until he choked. He focused on Muldoon's face, and on his own breathing. He would survive this. Muldoon didn't want to damage him. It would spoil his enjoyment when he did this the next night, and the next, and the next.

Dick could follow what Muldoon was doing just by his eyes, like watching a wrestler or a poker player telegraph his moves. His lips parted as he stroked more of that gel onto his cock, then pressed together as he lifted Dick's legs and pulled them wide, then curled up just before the head of his cock slid between Dick's cheeks. Dick steadied his face into absolute stillness, ignoring Muldoon's comment about how he'd make it easy for the first time, and the way his ass burned as Muldoon pressed into him a fraction at a time. He fixed his eyes on Muldoon's ear, and tried to make himself limp and pliant and not there.

When Muldoon was completely inside him—cock stretching Dick wide, his thighs pressed against the welts on Dick's ass—he paused and waited. "I wouldn't want to come too soon," he commented. He was panting a little, but kept his voice level like they were having coffee together. "You always remember you first time, don't you? With someone new, I mean, though it means both in your case, doesn't it, son?"

"Sir," Dick muttered, not taking his eyes off Muldoon's ear. He needed a haircut, Dick decided.

"I didn't hear that, Captain," Muldoon reproved, and he dug his fingers into Dick's legs hard enough to make him gasp.

"Yes, sir," Dick said more clearly. He didn't even remember the question, though Muldoon had just asked it. The pain had sparked the edge of panic in his chest, and he was having trouble keeping his breathing in check as Muldoon gently started to thrust.

"I really ought to take longer about this," Muldoon said. He thrust harder, his thighs slapping against Dick's ass at the end of the stroke. "I like to linger over a first time, make sure it's memorable for everyone, but we have to go before I'd like."

Dick didn't know how much time had passed in that room, but there still had to be hours left until second platoon left on its patrol. This couldn't last that long, could it? His other visits to Muldoon hadn't taken much more than forty minutes. He looked at Muldoon's eyes to see if he was serious, could could read nothing but an easy contentment. Dick's hand's curled into fists at his sides, and he squeezed until his nails bit into his palms, but nothing could distract from the sensations of Muldoon taking him and filling him, of how casually Muldoon was treating this, as if using Dick for his own pleasures was nothing to him. As if Dick himself were nothing at all. Dick knew that he would remember every second of this evening for the rest of his life, that it would haunt him like the hunted feeling of landing all alone in Normandy with only a knife for protection.

Muldoon's strokes had picked up to a hard, steady pace, flash slapping together with each entry, the table shuddering slightly under them. He certainly didn't seem to be on the verge of spending himself; he could even still talk, though he had to pause for breath. "I always liked the look of you," he said. "From the moment I saw you standing just a little too close to our friend Lewie. I liked you even more when you were on your knees with my cock in your mouth, looking up at me like you wanted to kill me, like your looking up at me now. 'Impotent fury,' I think they call it." He paused to hike Dick's legs up a little higher and further apart, which allowed him to push into Dick just a fraction of an inch more deeply. "Ah, that's better," he grunted. "I think I'll have to try you from behind tomorrow. It's easier, but I wanted to see your face this time."

If he could have thrown his arms across his eyes, Dick would have. He hated the idea of Muldoon seeing through his every attempt at a facade, like an adult condescending to go along with a boy who played at bravery. Muldoon kept driving into him with calm, assured strokes, and every one seemed to rattle Dick's hold a little looser. He felt like he was holding onto a railing over a deep chasm, and Muldoon was prying Dick's fingers away from their grip, one by one.

"Mmmmmm," Muldoon moaned, and rotated his hips to spread Dick wider still, moving like he was settling in for a long stay. "You think you'll get to like this by the end?" he asked. "Some men do."

"No, sir," Dick answered.

"Well," Muldoon said, "It makes no difference to me." He accelerated then, rocking in and out of Dick while his fingers dug into Dick's thighs, nails biting into the skin. He'd have marks there too in the morning. He'd have marks on every inch of skin by the time Muldoon was done with him. Muldoon's breath came in harsh pants now, his thighs slapped against Dick like mocking applause, and the table squeaked a little under them. Dick wondered if he'd ever be able to hear any other sound, or to feel anything but Muldoon's cock in his ass, the scratch of ODs on the inside of his thighs, and the hard table under his shoulders.

Dick watched a bead of sweat form on the edge of Muldoon's ear, growing until it rolled down to his earlobe and caught there, swaying back and forth with each thrust. It swayed faster, and Dick knew it would be over soon. He kept his eyes away from Muldoon's, but couldn't shut out his small grunts of pleasure as he approached his climax.

"That's good," he muttered. "You feel good, son." Then he jerked hard against Dick's ass, rocking the whole table back an inch. "Yeah," he breathed, and then went still. Dick felt Muldoon's cock twitch inside him, and knew it must be pumping come into him. He wondered vaguely if he'd ever feel clean again, or would ever feel someone's touch without remembering these hands before anything else. "Yeah," Muldoon said again. He didn't pull out, but stayed inside Dick as he caught his breath. "I've half a mind just to stay here until I'm ready to go again," he said. "You'd let me do that, wouldn't you?"

"Yes, sir," Dick said, and he knew how defeated he sounded, but couldn't seem find any of the anger he'd felt at the start. A bottomless numbness had started to creep over him again, and his whole body ached.

Maybe that dull surrender was what made Muldoon smile and say, "Perhaps another night, son." He seemed to prefer beating down sparks of defiance, and Dick didn't have any fight left in him. Muldoon pulled out of Dick and stepped away towards the wash basin. Leaving Dick suddenly alone and cold to his core. "That will be all, Winters," he called across the room. He was washing his cock and tucking it away, then cleaning his hands thoroughly with soap and water, movements practised and businesslike.

Dick let his legs fall and pushed himself up from the table. His ass felt strange, sore certainly, but also somehow empty, like he kept feeling for a missing tooth. He had to steady himself on the edge of the table as he tried to stand, then got his legs under him. He turned from Muldoon and started to pull his clothes back on, dressing completely this time. He didn't think he'd have time to change. It was 2230 already, and Muldoon would want to make a production of seeing the men off.

When Dick was dressed again, he stood at attention and waited for Muldoon. He hadn't been dismissed yet, and he worried this wasn't the end of the appointment. Could Muldoon want to do something else to him so soon?

But Muldoon only told him to put the quilt and bolster back in the bedroom. Dick folded the cloth mechanically, ignoring the dampness where he'd lain moments before. He hadn't realised that he'd broken into a cold sweat until he felt it on the fabric. A single red hair clung to the bolster and Dick picked it off and pocketed it. He wondered if Muldoon would sleep on it that night. The idea of him having something that smelled of Dick's hair, perhaps laying his head where Dick's head had been, struck him as almost vampiric. Dick shuddered and hurried to the bedroom.

It was after he'd put the bolster back on and smoothed the quilt over the foot of the bed that he turned and saw the harness for Muldoon's sidearm still hung from a hook on the wall. He could see the weight of the .45 in its holster.

Without hesitating, without hardly even thinking, Dick drew the weapon, tucked it behind his back, and left the bedroom. Muldoon was sitting in the wing-backed chair, his back to Dick, waiting.

Dick crossed to him in three strides, chambered a round, wrapped his free arm around Muldoon's neck, reached over him, and fired into his leg. The shot went true, tearing into the main artery along the inside of Muldoon's leg, sending blood jetting across the floor.

Muldoon jerked against Dick's arm and cried out inarticulately, but Dick held fast. He had the pistol in a white knuckled grip, and his whole body was shaking as Muldoon writhed against him. Muldoon was trying to get out of the chair, to cry out for help, anything to save his life, but Dick knew no one would hear him, and soon he'd be too weak to escape.

The death by arterial bleeding that seemed to happen so fast when a medic was struggling to save a man's life dragged on and on for Muldoon. He kept trying to say something, but the shock was taking him fast, and Dick refused to listen. He wouldn't listen to this man again. He wouldn't look into his eyes again.

Dick held on, trying not to make any bruises. His hands and arms were covered in blood, and it made his grip slippery, but all he had to do was pin Muldoon's body to the chair as his struggles weakened, and finally faded into twitches. Then he let go.

The body thudded to the floor, twitched a few more times, and was still. Dick crouched there, frozen, until something about the seeping pool of blood spurred him forward. He wiped the gun clean on his shirt and dropped it—letting it hit onto the floor in front of the chair, the carpet deadening the sound of its fall—then crawled over to the body.

His fingers left bloody prints on its neck. Dick held them there for a long time, feeling nothing. There was no life left. He rolled the body over and ripped at the bullet hole in the pants. The skin underneath was white streaked with the brightest red. That skin had slapped against Dick's ass minutes before. He wouldn't touch it again.

Dick had blood all over him. He looked at his hands, then turned them over and looked at the bloody palms. It was easier than looking at the body on the floor.

When he'd caught his breath again, Dick stood, inhaled deeply, and screamed, "Medic!" at the top of his voice.


	6. Chapter 6

Dick ran down the stairs, through the hall and into the street, still yelling for a medic. He felt as though he were drifting outside of himself. He couldn't tell if his shouts were too panicked, or too calm, but all the officers billeted nearby turned out, and soon Dick was surrounded by men demanding to know what had happened.

They thought the blood was his. It was all over his ODs and hands. He told them, in a tone he was sure was far too even, that Col. Muldoon had accidentally shot himself. He'd been cleaning his gun, maybe. Dick didn't know. He'd heard the shot from his room, and by the time he'd gotten there, it was too late. He'd tried to stop the bleeding. He thought it was too late. A medic should go see.

Someone went and checked. Someone else put a blanket around Dick's shoulders. Sink showed up a few minutes later, and said something calming while trying to get Dick to sit down somewhere warm, for Christ's sake. They seemed to think Dick was in shock.

Sink had just gotten Dick into the basement room across the street when Nix pushed past his CO and dropped to a crouch in front of Dick's chair. "Are you hurt?" he demanded. He wasn't wearing his helmet, and his face was the colour of ice. Dick reached up to touch his cheek, and then remembered his hands were still covered in blood. "Dick," Nix pressed, "are you hurt?"

"No," Dick answered. His voice still sounded like it was coming from someone else's throat. "No. It's not my blood. I'm fine."

"You're in shock, Dick," Sink said gruffly. "No wonder. Nix, it sounds like Col. Muldoon accidentally shot himself. The medics are up there now."

"What?" Nix's mouth dropped open, and he looked from Dick to Sink and back again. "He what?"

"Capt. Nixon!" Sink snapped, clearly unwilling to deal with two officers in shock while another lay dead.

"Sir?" Nix said, and Dick was pretty sure he said it too, even though Sink hadn't asked him.

"Capt. Nixon," Sink repeated with emphasis, "stay here and look after Dick; keep him warm, and for Christ's sake clean him up. I've got to go sort this out. You and you," he added, pointing at the milling junior staff officers who'd trailed them in, "come with me."

Dick and Nix both nodded, and Sink stomped out, drawing the officers behind him. Nix got up and went to the door to lock it before he returned to Dick's side. He crouched in front of the chair and put both his hands on Dick's knees. "Did you do it?" Nix asked, voice barely a whisper.

Dick jerked his head in a tiny nod.

"Good." Nix slumped back, landing on his ass with a thud, and breathed out a long sigh. "That's good."

Was it? Dick had done it for a reason; they'd agreed, but the act itself had been... "Nix?" he said, half in inquiry, even though he didn't know what the question was.

"Jesus," Nix rolled to his knees and rubbed his hands up and down Dick's arms, and then his calves, moving briskly, as if all that was wrong was that Dick had been out in the cold. "Let's get you cleaned up." He got up long enough to find the wash basin and cloth, then knelt in front of Dick again. "Jesus Christ," he muttered again.

Dick held his hands out and let Nix wipe them clean, watching as the water swirled from pink to red against the white basin. Nix moved confidently, wrapping the cloth around each finger and pulling it clean, then rinsing and doing it again. Dick let him turn his hands over and push his sleeves back to clean his wrists. "I should change," he said, and looked around for his footlocker before he realised that he wasn't in his own billet.

"Later," Nix said. He was wiping at Dick's face now, cloth cool on his skin. Dick hadn't even registered the blood there. "Cleaning his gun?" he asked softly. "I didn't know you..." he seemed to realise that was uncertain ground, trailed off, and then said, "Good plan. Wish I'd been the one to do it."

"I don't," Dick said. For all that of the two of them Dick was seen as the paragon and Nix as the reprobate, Dick would do anything on Earth to keep Nix's hands clean. He'd been so damn happy when Nix had been transferred to staff and out of the line of fire, not that he seemed to be able to keep from wandering back to Dick's side, however much danger lay there. "Listen," he said, taking Nix's hands up again,the bloody cloth caught between them, "the MPs will be here soon. I'll tell them what I told Sink, and maybe that will be enough to end it. But, Lew, we can't ever talk about what happened again. It's too dangerous. We take this one to our graves, all right?"

"Dick," Nix started to say then bit his lip and nodded. "Yeah, you're right, but is that something you're going to be able to live with?"

Was it? Dick didn't know yet. It hardly seemed real. He was so tired that he couldn't seem to separate the feeling Muldoon's cock ramming into him from the feeling of holding the man down as he struggled to survive. His ass still felt loose and wet, and Nix hadn't got all the blood off Dick's hands, and at the moment the only word that Dick could think of was _irredeemable._ "I'm going to have to," he said. "You better unlock that door for the MPs. I've got to..." He remembered why Muldoon had been waiting for him. "Is Easy still going on patrol tonight?"

Nix frowned, the sudden change in topic knocking him off course. "I don't think anyone's told them not to," he said. Then he stood and looked down at Dick. Their hands were still linked, and he tugged slightly, seeing if Dick would stand as well. Dick didn't move. "Speirs is handling it. I'll send a runner telling him that you won't be there."

"Maybe I should..."

"Dick, your ODs are covered in blood, and you look like you've either seen a ghost or you are one," Nix said. "I think this one time, Easy will be better off without you. They're big boys, they can handle a patrol without you kissing them goodbye."

Dick tried to laugh at that, but it came out more like just saying the word, "Ha." Then he let Nix pull him back to his feet, and they went out into the street to find the MPs.

* * *

After about an hour, Sink and the MPs concluded that Muldoon probably hadn't been cleaning his gun, but might have been checking it. No one asked Dick anything that indicated that they had the least suspicion of him, and Dick kept his mouth shut unless someone asked him a question. There would be an inquiry, but from what Sink said, it would barely be a formality.

"Rough night," one of the MPs concluded, and patted Dick on the shoulder. "Why don't you go get changed, sir."

Nix had been hovering at his elbow the whole time, and moved to go with Dick, but backed off on Dick's expression.

Safe behind the closed door of his billet, Dick stripped completely naked and rubbed his body down with a cold wash cloth. He was shivering, he realised, but didn't stop, even when the welts on his ass stung under his scrubbing hands. What he wanted to do was crawl back into those showers and stay there all night, but he didn't think they were running. Instead he made sure to wipe his skin clean where the blood had soaked through his sleeves, his collar, the knees of his pants, and when he was done that, to wipe between his legs. He stood for a moment staring at the soiled cloth and then dropped it in the basin and started to dress. He was grateful that Davidson's foretold winter uniforms had indeed come in, even though the new shirt felt starchy and rough, and didn't seem to fit right around his shoulders and hips. It was too loose, he realised as he belted it. He had gotten the same size again, but had lost weight in the Ardennes. He didn't look in the mirror.

The MPs were gone, but Sink and Nix were still waiting for him when he came out. Nix had his collar turned up to his ears and his arms wrapped around himself. Sink was standing at ease like the cold of an Alsace winter meant nothing to him. "Dick," Sink said, "I want you to let Nix take you back to his billet. We're moving a camp bed in. You look like you need someone to keep an eye on you tonight."

Dick nodded, and Nix looked at the ground before saying, "I was all for making you sleep in the field hospital, but apparently they can't spare the bed."

Sink glanced sideways at Nix, and Dick was pleased to see fondness instead of exasperation. Maybe the last few days hadn't completely demolished Nix's career at Regiment.

"I'd rather be alone," Dick said. He'd always hated being fussed over, and now more so than ever.

"Sure you would," Nix told him, and took Dick's elbow to guide him down through the dark streets towards his old billet.

"I don't like how kind everyone is being," Dick complained when they were a block and a half away from Sink.

"Of course you don't," Nix said. He hadn't let go of Dick's elbow, and Dick wondered if he was ever going to let go of him again.

"They shouldn't be. I should be in the stockade." Muldoon's struggling, dying breaths echoed in his ears. Dick had never killed anyone that close. It had always been with an M1 over a distance.

Nix sighed. "They should. You shouldn't. I thought we were taking this to our graves. Snap out of it, Dick."

"Right," Dick said. "Sorry. I'm..." he didn't even know what he was.

"You're tired," Nix told him. "It'll make more sense after you've gotten some sleep."

They were at the billet by then, and Nix guided Dick up the stairs and down the short hall. He paused for a second at the first door, then apparently remembered that that was Davidson's now, and kept going to his room. Someone had left a folded army cot in the hall, and Nix pushed Dick into the room before dragging the cot in after them and leaning it against the door. There wasn't really enough room for it if anyone wanted to turn around twice, but Nix pushed Dick onto his bed, and snapped the cot open, setting it up across the doorway. Dick watched him work, wondering at how much detail he was putting into something no one would check: two wool blankets spread out and folded down with a pillow across the top. "You take the bed," Nix said, and Dick realised that he meant to sleep in the cot, not share the single bed.

"All right," Dick said, and he leaned over to tug at his bootlaces. He had done them up sloppily, and one of the knots snarled. Had anyone noticed? He kept plucking at the knot, but he thought he was pulling it tighter.

"Dammit," Nix muttered and knelt, swatting Dick's hands away so that he could fix the laces himself. The came undone in seconds. "Here you go." He pulled both boots off and set them under the bed. "What would you do without me, huh?"

Dick shook his head. "I don't know," he said honestly. He set aside his helmet, belts and side arm, then got up enough to pull down the blankets. He didn't want to sleep by himself, but Nix was right, it wasn't safe to share right now, and Nix... Nix probably didn't want to share a bed with him anyway, not any more. Dick curled up around his knees, his back to Nix, not wanting to watch him undress for bed. He heard the clink of Nix's flask and then a rustle of clothes, and squeezed his eyes shut against the lamp light. He didn't want to think about Nix being so close and not being able to touch, maybe never being able to touch him again. He couldn't blame Nix; given the choice, Dick wouldn't be in his own skin right now either. He'd done everything he could to keep Nix safe, to keep his own position so that he could protect the men, and maybe it had worked in the end, so long as Sink never suspected that Captain R. D. Winters could have murdered his CO in cold blood and then lied to cover it up. Maybe, but probable escape from consequences imposed by the US Army didn't make Dick any less damned.

He opened his eyes as the light clicked off, and stared at the wall inches from his nose. The room was absolutely dark, the blackout curtains keeping out the moonlight. He heard the cot creak, and blankets slide, and hoped Nix would sleep. Dick didn't think he would himself, no matter that he hadn't properly in days. Impressions of those last four days ran circles through his mind: Muldoon's hand stroking his hair, kneeling naked with semen dribbling down his chin, Muldoon's flaccid cock brushing his nose, the searing pain of the switch on his ass as Muldoon humped against his hip, Lt. Fitzpatrick's waxen face, Muldoon's mouth wet on Dick's, the gun in his hands slippery with blood, pale skin streaked red.

Dick didn't realise that he was crying until he felt the cool dampness on his pillow. He bit the inside of his lip until he tasted blood, and forced himself to draw in an even breath. He wasn't going to weep for Muldoon; he wasn't even going to weep for himself. He was going to keep it together, because if he didn't what was the point of all this? He'd taken everything Muldoon had dished out so that he could hold onto what he loved. He couldn't lose his grip on that now. If he cracked up, Sink would send him to some kind of light duty in Paris, like he had with Buck, and he'd never see Nix or Lip or any of his men again. They'd go on without him to look out for them, and maybe they'd be better off. What kind of soldier was Dick any more? How could he possibly hope to look after anyone when he couldn't seem to stop crying?

His body convulsed around his stomach, trying to stifle the sob that followed that thought. He had to keep quiet, to not wake Nix, but he couldn't seem to breathe. His stomach muscles ached from tension, and his heart felt like it was going to pound right out of his chest, but his lungs were stuck, unable to pull air in. Dick whimpered and closed his eyes.

Behind him, the cot creaked, and then he felt Nix's warm hand on his shoulder. "Dick?"

Dick couldn't answer, couldn't even breathe. He turned his face into the pillow to smoother the soul-deep wailing sob that he felt building inside him. It tore up from his stomach, ripping through his lungs and throat, until his whole body screamed with the weight of it. He hauled in a breath, and it scraped down his throat and choked him. He had never cried like this, not even as a child, and he had no idea how to stop.

The bed behind him shifted, and the blankets pulled back and then Nix was curling around Dick's back and pulling him against his chest. He kissed the back of Dick's neck between his collar and his hair, and rocked his body against Dick's. He was whispering something in Dick's ear, but it was all a jumble of nonsense words, and Dick couldn't hear it anyway; he didn't want to hear it. He didn't want to be comforted or touched. He wanted to curl up so small that he vanished off the face of the Earth.

"Dick," Nix whispered. "Dick, come on, it's all right. I've got you. I promise I've got you now." He was tugging at Dick's shoulder, and Dick let himself be pulled around until he was curled on his other side, face buried in Nix's chest well Nix kissed his hair and rubbed his hands up and down Dick's back. "I'm sorry. I didn't think... you said you wanted to be alone. I'm sorry."

Nix was so warm and solid that Dick wished he could just melt into him. He tried to say that he was sorry for being a child, that Nix didn't have to coddle him, but he couldn't seem to form words. He pressed his face against Nix's cotton undershirt, and sobbed again. He felt like everything he'd ever thought he was was being ripped away, and soon he wouldn't have anything left at all. Only Nix's arms around him, and his breath in his hair.

"Oh, God, Dick. I'm sorry," Nix said miserably. His arms wrapped tightly around Dick's back and he pulled them together like he was trying to merge them into one person. He started to hum, and the melody vibrated through his chest, out of time and off key, song unrecognisable and possibly non-existent. Nix rocked them both back and forth, and kept his lips pressed to Dick's hair just above his ear.

It was an absurd thing for one grown man to do to another, but somehow it calmed Dick, and each breath came a little more easily until the sobs faded into sniffles, and he could pull his thoughts together enough to admit, "I might not be all right."

Nix's chest shook with a laugh. "You're kidding," he said. "Dick, if you were all right after what you've been through, you'd have to be some kind of robot."

"I should..." Dick started to say.

"Shut up and go to sleep, Winters," Nix growled, and rolled onto his back, pulling Dick half across his chest. He squeezed the back of Dick's neck and scratched his fingers along the scalp at the edge of Dick's hair. Dick lay still, breathing slowly and listening to the steady beat of Nix's heart. He couldn't think of anything any more, so he slept.

* * *

Dick woke with is face mushed against Nix's wet shirt feeling like he'd just lost twelve consecutive wrestling matches. Every muscle in his body ached, and his eyeballs and sinuses felt as though they'd been sanded with heavy-grit paper. He crawled over Nix, who stirred and protested that they didn't have to be up for hours, and got shakily to his feet. There wasn't a lot of room between the bed, the cot, Nix's footlocker and the washstand, but Dick stood and tried to stretch out his body as best he could in the limited space. His back popped as he arched backward and Dick sighed and wondered when he'd turned into an old man. Some time in the last few days, he thought. He rummaged through Nix's footlocker—past empty whiskey bottles and a jumble of gear that would get every pass they'd ever had in training revoked—until he found a shaving kit. The razor was lethally sharp, and the soap almost unused.

Dick knelt in front of the low washstand and washed his face. The water was cold, but cleaning the dried tears and mucus away woke him more than the shock. He pushed water though his hair with his fingers, then found Nix's comb and tried to flatten the places where it stuck up from sleeping oddly. Dick surprised himself with the steadiness of his hands as he lathered and then shaved. As he towelled the last scrapes of soap from his face, he looked himself in the eye. He didn't look too bad. His eyes were red and his face a little wan, but that could be lack of sleep, explicable to anyone who had heard of Muldoon's death. He didn't feel anything at the moment, past an aching emptiness in his chest. He let the feeling lie and focused on getting ready for duty. He had to check in with Easy, find out how the patrol had gone, and if he would need to write any more letters home.

When Dick turned back to the bed, Nix was awake and watching him silently. Dick felt his cheeks heat, wondering if Nix had seen him examining himself in the mirror. After Dick's lapses of control over the past few days, Dick knew that half the battalion would be watching him like a hawk, just waiting for him to crack up, and that went double for Nix.

"Good morning," Dick said, even though the sun was still an hour from being up. His voice felt rough, and he cleared his throat before saying, "I'm going to check in with Speirs."

"Wait, I'll go with you," Nix said, rolling out of bed onto the floor and then dragging himself upright. Dick knew from experience that Nix's morning ablutions usually consisted of, at most, splashing some water on his face, knocking back a swig from his flask, and putting on the majority of his uniform. There wasn't any point in trying to leave before Nix could follow, so Dick focused on folding down the cot. He was barely done before Nix was ready. He'd even skipped the drink. He brushed past Dick without looking at him, clearly noticing that Dick had noticed, but not wanting to hear whatever Dick might say. It was an attitude Dick appreciated, and he followed without comment.

A light snow was falling as the light lifted toward dawn and ice crusted the muddy streets. Nix led the way toward Easy's CP, and Dick followed him. Even with close to six hours of solid sleep, Dick still felt tired to the point of drifting, and previous night's the impression of being outside of himself lingered. He knew what was happening, and was already working through all the possible results of the patrol, but the connection to his feelings, even worry, just wasn't there. Nix was either caught in his own thoughts, or understood Dick's need for silent reflection, because he didn't say a thing on the ten minute walk through town.

It was already 0600 when they got to the CP, and Martin was talking quietly with Speirs while Lipton napped on the couch and Luz loitered obtrusively.

"Is it true, sir?" Martin asked as soon as he saw Dick and Nix.

Dick opened his mouth and closed it, not knowing if he should say yes or no, but Nix saved him saying, "Depends what you've heard, Johnny."

"That Col. Muldoon accidentally shot himself right in front of the captain," Luz broke in, not appearing the least abashed, even when Lip opened his eyes enough to shoot him a dangerous look.

"Not exactly," Dick said. He hadn't thought about having to lie to his men, too. That came harder than Sink and every MP in the 506th combined. He was going to have to lie to everyone for the rest of his life, he realised, and the thought momentarily stunned him.

"Capt. Winters heard the shot; he wasn't in the same room," Nix clarified, and his look did shut Luz up. So Dick was making Nix lie for him too. He wondered if it came more easily to him, and and then reproached himself for the disloyalty of the thought.

"Sgt. Martin," Dick interrupted. "Report on the last night's patrol."

"Yes, sir," Martin said, and rattled off a thumbnail of the action, or lack of action in that case. They'd scouted out the far side for the river, had found the artillery positions, hadn't made contact with the enemy until they stumbled onto an MG nest that intelligence hadn't accounted for, had thrown a couple grenades in it and ran like hell for the river under covering fire from battalion. No casualties, no loss of equipment. Martin was understandably pleased with himself, and Dick felt a glow of pride for how far his men had grown over the years.

"Good work," he said, and watched Martin grow half an inch at the compliment. "Pass that on to the men."

Nix leaned in to look at the updates Martin and Speirs had been making to the map of enemy territory, and Dick let himself fall back a little. He was pleased at how well Easy had done without him, but at the same time the fact that they'd planned and implemented a mission with next to no input from him, underscored how apart he'd grown since he'd moved to battalion staff. He supposed that was the paradox of a father's pride, and smiled at the vanity of that thought.

"We were all sorry to hear about Col. Muldoon, sir," Lip said from the couch. His eyes were still half closed, but Dick was pretty sure he hadn't missed a thing.

"It was a shock," Dick said neutrally. That at least was honest. "Especially after Col. Strayer."

"Are you commanding the battalion, sir?"

Dick blinked. Was he? He must be. They were too short on officers to have dropped someone else in already. He couldn't believe that he'd let the entire battalion go for almost eight hours without a clear command structure. What on Earth had Speirs and the other company commanders been thinking since last night? Sink must have sent down some kind of word on that. Dick rubbed a hand over his mouth and said, "I'm talking to Col. Sink next."

"That's a good idea, sir," Lip said mildly, and Dick stiffened slightly at the implied rebuke, more so because it was well earned. It didn't matter what had just happened to him. His men had seen worse every day in the Ardennes. Dick had to pull himself together, and he had to do it now. No more drifting.

"Are you done, Nix?" he asked.

"In a minute," Nix replied, still engrossed in the map. Dick crossed to look at it, noting the pencilled changes that Martin had made. Hopefully the snow would lift long enough for artillery or the air corps to hit them before everything moved again. One more day, and none of that would be Dick's problem. He was looking forward to 2nd Battalion being in reserve for once. "All right," Nix said, snapping his notebook shut. "Good work, Martin."

* * *

The snow was fell more heavily as they walked back towards regimental HQ, obscuring everything more than a few hundred yards away.

Dick He stayed half a pace behind Nix, watching the snow make lace patterns on his helmet as it gathered and then slid down the sides. By the time they get to Sink's HQ, they both wore overcoats of snow they had to shake off as they entered. A stove blazed inside, and the heat, humidity and smell of wet wool struck Dick in the face as Nix held the door for him. It took him right back to childhood winters in Lancaster, coming in after sledding down the big hill. All he needed was his mother making hot chocolate. Sadness struck him at that thought. He'd been trying not to think of his parents, or home. He would have to lie to them, too, or tell them their only son had fucked his CO and then murdered him.

"How are you feeling, Dick?" Sink asked, and for a moment his paternal tone reminded Dick far too much of Muldoon. But that wasn't right; not everyone used kindness to mask evil. Sink was a good man.

"I'm fine, sir," he said. He realised he was hunching his shoulders and made himself stand tall. "Thank you for your concern. It's been a shock."

"Damn fool accident," Sink muttered, sparing Dick from asking what he really wanted to know. "A career man like that should have known to be more careful."

"Yes, sir," Dick said neutrally. Not speaking ill of the dead wasn't going to be a problem; he didn't want to talk about Muldoon at all. "I apologise for..." he hesitated, unsure how to describe his break the night before, "for not taking charge of the situation last night."

Nix, standing on his left, brushed his fingers against Dick's hip, which Dick thought was likely meant to be reassuring, but just made him have to repress a start at the sudden touch.

Sink watched him thoughtfully. "You've been under a good deal of stress, Dick," he said. 

Dick didn't think that was a question, but Sink paused long enough that he had to answer. "The 506th has been on the line for a long time, sir."

It was an obvious dodge, and Sink snorted. "Second Battalion's lost two COs in less than a week. What I'm trying to find out, Capt. Winters, is if it's going to lose a third."

"If you're asking me, sir," Dick answered, "I believe that I am fit to command. Until Col. Strayer returns," he added. Though he wondered now if Strayer was to return, of if Sink meant Dick to fill the position more permanently. He hoped that if that were the case, that he hadn't just lied to his CO. He didn't want to admit how much he needed the battalion right now—as commander, as XO, as supply officer, anything, so long as he was doing something, and Sink didn't make him leave his men.

"As it happens, I am asking you," Sink said. "I expect that you will do us proud."

"Thank you, sir." Dick swallowed, and snapped a salute to cover his emotions. He wanted to make Sink proud, but the truth of how he'd gained command lay like a thick cloud around him. It felt as if it should be visible—the shadows that framed a comicbook villain, something that everyone who looked at Dick would see.

"Congratulations, Dick," Nix said with far more sincerity than Dick deserved. "I can't think of a better man for the job." Dick didn't understand how Nix could stand to look at him, let alone clap him on the shoulder and smile like he meant it. Nix had always been good at lying, the darkest part of Dick's thoughts reminded him. Was this a display for Sink, the same as Dick's lies about Muldoon had been? Nix had been, if not party to the murder itself, then guilty by foreknowledge and an accomplice in its concealment, and then there was the matter of having been Dick's lover. It was in his best interests to protect Dick's shining reputation, lest any tarnish rub off on him.

Dick made himself stop. He was being paranoid. Nix was the dearest, truest friend he'd ever had. He'd rocked Dick to sleep last night, let him sob on his shoulder, and never said a word about it the next morning. If he said he was happy for Dick he meant it.

Dick realised that he was wool gathering again, and made himself focus on Sink, who was asking Nix about the patrol.

"Your boys did a fine job," he said to Dick. "A very fine job indeed."

"They'll be glad to hear that you think so, sir," Dick said. "Captain Speirs and Sergeant Martin deserve the credit." He would have to get Speirs to write up a commendation for Martin. He should start a list of everything he needed to get done that morning. He was having trouble keeping track of things.

Sink wanted artillery on the new positions, especially the 155s, so Dick and Nix went back into the snow to organise it. The snow kept up, making a bubble wherein Dick and Nix walked through endless shelled-out streets.

"You're not my minder, Nix," Dick said when they were a block back from his office.

"Of course not," Nix said, and even Dick could hear the artificiality to that cheerfulness. "This is an operation. I'm an operations officer."

"Shelling the krauts, or making sure I don't crack up and confess?" Dick asked.

Nix stopped, boots squeaking in the snow. Dick almost ran into his shoulder, and had to put a hand on Nix's back to steady himself. Nix rounded on him, and then they were standing too close, and Dick took half a step back to get some distance between himself and Nix's anger. "You think I'd do that to you?" Nix demanded. "For Christ's sake, Dick, you're my best friend. You've gone through hell, and I don't want you to think that you have to tough it out alone." He spread his hands, indicating that he thought that was exactly what Dick was doing this very minute.

Was he? Dick couldn't tell. "Right," he said. "Sorry, Lew."

Nix shook his head and turned back down the road. "No problem," then after a beat, "and we do need to shell the krauts, and you hardly looked at Martin's map."

There would be a copy on Dick's desk by now, but Nix was right. Dick wasn't paying attention. His brain felt as full of snow as the air. Nix was probably more worried that Dick would get lost wander into the river than anything else.

"And you don't have an S3, anyway," Nix added as he pushed into the house they'd commandeered for offices and HQ.

Dick smiled. "Want a job, Nix? I've just come into a position of some authority."

"I'll consider it," Nix said, surprisingly serious, and Dick wondered if he'd take a demotion just to keep a better eye on him.

The battalion staff were milling, obviously waiting for word from Dick or Sink or someone who knew what was going on.

"I'll be taking command," Dick told them.

"Is it true that Col. Muldoon made you watch him shoot himself in the head?" Zielinski asked, a little wide eyed.

Dick sighed. The US Army rumour mill was clearly churning away at maximum effort, but at the same time, that one came a little to close to home. Nix stepped in again, explaining the official story, and Dick felt compelled to add, "I don't believe we are respecting Col. Muldoon's memory by listening to gossip, Corporeal." Not doing the men any favours either, passing a lurid story like that around.

"Sorry, sir." The poor kid was blushing to his ears again, and Dick took pity on him, and started taking status reports.

Nix might as well have been Dick's S3; Sink certainly didn't get any other use out of him that day. They shelled the guns—results indifferent with the heavy snow—walked the line, talked to every man in the battalion, visited the aid station again, attended a supply briefing, went to lunch, and then camped in Dick's office to start on paperwork. At that point, the situation was ridiculous enough that Dick threw Nix out, leaving him alone for the first time since he'd sat with Muldoon's body.

Dick stared at the snow still swirling down outside his window. What time to have a war. Maybe the river would freeze, and the Germans would come across like wolves. He'd read a story about that, he thought: a winter so long and so cold that the wolves had starved and come ravening into the cities. Maybe it was the 506th that were the wolves in this case, then. Or they would be if he didn't get these supply requisitions done. Dick turned back to his desk and made a point of going through one page after another without stopping to think.

Zielinski brought him soup and bread at one point, and he ate it without looking up from his work. By the time darkness closed in on Haguenau, Dick's desk had never been better organised, and he'd worked himself out of something to do. He wanted to check in with the men, but the idea of walking the line through the snow and cold momentarily overwhelmed him.

"Don't be a child," he muttered and made himself get up. His legs were stiff from sitting so long, and his back ached. He thought he might have strained it the night before, on the table, while Muldoon had been... Dick rubbed his eyes and focused on the best way to at least get to the company CPs and major OPs, if not the whole line. He wished Nix were here, and then was glad that he wasn't. Dick needed to be able to keep himself together without leaning on anyone. Nix had saved him; he'd saved him twice in the last twenty four hours, but sooner rather than later he was going to realise that Dick wasn't the man he'd met in OCS any more, nor the friend who'd marched through Normandy, Holland and Belgium with him. Whatever Nix had found in his relationship with Dick—a question that had frankly always puzzled Dick on the best of days—wasn't there any more, and Nix was too smart not to work that out. Then he'd be at regiment where he was supposed to be, and Dick would be just another battalion staff officer, assuming he could hold onto that position. No, Nix had done more than enough for him, letting himself be used as a child's teddy bear the night before, and nannying Dick through this morning. He'd been party to murder, and conspiracy, and treason, besides, and Dick had to wonder if that weighed on Nix the same as it made Dick feel like he was carrying sixty pounds of extra gear everywhere he went.

Gear or not, it wasn't getting any lighter outside. Dick got up and wrapped himself in coat and scarf. Zielinski was just locking up for the evening, or maybe just looking busy while he waited for Dick. "Captain Nixon sent a message, sir, about half an hour ago."

Checking in on Dick again? "Why didn't you pass it along right away?" Dick demanded. Zielinski glanced at his boots, and Dick instantly felt awful for snapping at the boy twice in one day. "No, it's all right. Let me have it now though."

"He said not to bother you, sir. Just to mention that you and Captain Davidson swapped billets again, and all your gear will be back where it was the first night."

Dick paused to consider some private dragging footlockers back and forth in the snow, and felt guilty for not regretting the waste of time. He hadn't even thought about having to go back to his billet in the row house he'd shared with Muldoon, but the very idea repelled him. Though now he would be back in the room where Muldoon had first caught him and Nix, where Muldoon had made him kneel and suck him off and agree to sell his soul. Dick didn't think he could sleep there, either. He would come back to his office, he decided. He could sleep at his desk. Whoever that private was would just have to pack his footlocker into a truck back to the battalion's reserve position in the morning anyway, if they really were moving off the line. "Thank you, Corporeal," he said. "That will be all."

* * *

Everyone who could be was already tucked in for the night, and trudging through the snow Dick felt almost as though he were back at Bastogne. An immense weariness overtook him as he started down-river towards the Fox Company CP. The shelling had let up since that morning—possibly as a result of having gotten the guns earlier, more likely because of the poor visibility—but Dick still didn't want to risk carrying a light. He walked through the grey streets with the grey sky seeming to surround him, and no world at all existing past the squeak of his boots in the snow.

He could keep walking, he thought, go out past F Company's lines, through where 3rd Battalion was anchoring their position, and down the Moder until it met the Rhine. He'd go past Strasbourg, and up to Switzerland, just walking forever in the snow and quiet, not having to think about anything except the next step. He felt invisible, like he could just pass through the lines without notice. If he wanted to, he could disappear into the arctic like the monster at the end of _Frankenstein_.

The sentry outside the Fox CP calling the password startled him out of his imaginings, and Dick turned back to the work of checking in with the men. They were all more settled then they had been that morning, when the news of Muldoon's death had splintered into a hundred rumours. They knew Dick, and were used to having him drop in and ask how they were.

Seeing the men relax when he came into a post or check in with a sentry both energised Dick to continue his tour of the line, and made him feel intensely guilty for his earlier fantasies of walking into the night. These soldiers were relying on him, and if he was to keep whatever tatters of honour and duty he had left, he couldn't let them down, not by falling apart, and certainly not by walking away.

He got back to his old billet feeling exhausted to the bone and also oddly cheered, but his mood dropped when he faced the door. He would just go in and brush his teeth and get a book, and then go back to battalion HQ and sleep in his office, as uncomfortable as that sounded. The floor behind his desk would be a good deal nicer than any number of foxholes he'd slept in over the past six months.

Nix caught him as he was leaving, asking him to hold up a minute, and Dick had the feeling that he'd been lying in wait.

"I was just going to..." Dick gestured out the door.

"Sleep at your desk?" Nix finished, and smiled thinly when Dick couldn't deny it. "Listen, why don't you just sleep same as last night. I, uh, kept the cot."

Dick wavered at that. Even if Nix no longer wanted to share a bed save to nurse Dick through a total emotional collapse—and that that Dick wanted him to was stupid and selfish, and exactly what had gotten them into this mess in the first place—the idea of curling up in a bed that smelled like Nix, knowing that Nix was sleeping across the door just behind him, was too appealing to turn down. He nodded thanks without saying anything, and turned sideways to slide past Nix down the hall.

When they they were behind closed doors, Nix set up the cot again and sat on it, while Dick sat on the bed and wondered what the hell he was going to say. He felt like just repeating "sorry" over and over again, or crying again, but knew he couldn't do either. Nix had put up with enough from him. He was too good a man to abandon Dick now, after what they'd been through, but Dick had no intention of taking advantage of Nix's pity, or of his guilt.

"You don't have to say anything if you don't want to," Nix said, apparently reading his mind. Dick nodded. "But if you... if you would feel better, talking about what happened, or about anything, I'm can listen."

"You're no father confessor, Lewis," Dick snapped. It came out more harshly than he'd meant it to, but the idea of telling another living soul about what Muldoon had done to him—how he'd used Dick's body like it was a toy, how his every word and every touch had made Dick less and less like he was a person at all—it would be as bad as going back to that room and finding out that it hadn't worked and Muldoon was alive and owned Dick's soul for the rest of his life.

Nix winced. "Still..."

"It's done," Dick said, exhaustion pulling at him. "I just want to forget that it happened."

"I wish I could," Nix said, then pinched his lips together, clearly regretting the words.

Dick understood what he meant. This would always stand between them. Dick had given everything he was and almost everything he had to keep Nix safe, and in the end it had cost him what he'd begun to think was the love of his life. "I know," he said, "I'm sorry."

Nix shook his head and fished for his hip flask. He drained it in three long swallows. Dick realised that it was the first drink he'd seen Nix take all day. He must have been hurting for it by now. Had he been staying sober to look after Dick?

A wave of temptation washed over Dick as he watched Nix's throat bob and swallow. Temptation to kiss Nix—even if it was just one last time—but also for the release Nix seemed to find in alcohol. Dick had never been drunk, but he wondered if oblivion was what he might need. "Does that help you sleep?" Dick asked.

"The whiskey?" Nix's tone bordered on mocking, and Dick hated how it was self-directed. "Dick, you should know by now, the whiskey helps me do everything." He screwed the cap back on the flask and chucked it at his open foot locker. It skidded off the edge and rolled under the bed.

"Do you think..." Dick started to say, but Nix was already shaking his head violently.

"No, no, no, no. Take it from a professional, now is not the time to start. You've got to work up to this level of vice." Nix said it kindly, but Dick knew if he pressed the issue he'd have a real fight on his hands, and he just didn't have any fight left in him.

"Yeah, you're probably right," he said. "I guess I'll pack it in, then." He started fumbling to undo his shirt, but it worked out that undressing in front of Nix, even when he knew it was just going to be down to undershirt and briefs wasn't something his brain was capable of. His hands got caught up on the first button, and he couldn't get them to move. He pulled the fabric out so that he could see it to work it out, and then realised how pathetic he must look and froze entirely.

"Maybe," Nix said carefully, "Maybe I should sleep in your room?"

"This is ridiculous!" Dick groaned. He pulled at the button until it came undone, and then the next, and then the next, until his shirt was open and he could pull it out of his pants and chuck it at Nix's footlocker. "I'm not afraid of you, Lew," he said, bending to unlace his boots. It seemed important for Nix to know that, suddenly. "I could never be afraid of you." Nix didn't say anything, just watched Dick stand and peel out of his pants. Not long ago, his eyes would have been wide and dark with desire, but now he just looked worried. For a heartbeat, Dick hated him for that worried look, and then he just felt tired and full of remorse. He crawled into bed, turning his back to Nix, and pulled the covers up over his ears.

He still heard the cot creak behind him and the clink of a bottle as Nix found something else to drink. Then the rustle of clothes and blankets as Nix stripped and settled into bed. "Good night, Dick," he said, and he sounded so forlorn that Dick wished he could go over there and pull Nix into his arms the way Nix had held him the night before, but he was too tired to think about what that would mean, so he stayed where he was.


	7. Chapter 7

Dick dreamed he was walking through the snow. They were in the field leading down to Foy, and Easy was spread out to hell and gone. All the men were frozen, like they were trapped in a single cell of a film, but German fire still rained down. Dick wasn't worried about it, he just walked through the snow looking for something. Lew? He shouldn't be in the field. He should be safe at Regiment.

He rounded a haystack and found Dike sitting paralysed in place, with Lip leaning into his ear, just as frozen. When he looked up the slope to the forest, from where he and Sink had been watching the attack, he didn't see himself, or Sink, or Lew, or even Ron Speirs.

He saw Muldoon, dressed in his ODs, blood pouring down his leg, staining the snow crimson. He was smiling.

Dick snapped awake, eyes opening to absolute darkness. His arms curled in front of him, bunching the blankets against his chest. Dick rolled onto his back and took one breath after another until his heart rate slowed. He usually dreamed of battle, when he remembered his dreams at all, and he should have expected that his battle with Muldoon, if he could call it that, would begin to appear as well, but seeing him alive had been such a shock.

He wanted to check the time—to see how much more of the night he would have to wait out—but he didn't want to risk waking Nix with a light.

Nix would only fuss, and Dick was already sick of being fussed over, or perhaps—more precisely—he was sick of how much he wanted someone, preferably Nix, to just take care of everything, and let Dick be alone and silent and unneeded. He was still tired, but he'd been tired all day. He folded his hands over his chest, closed his eyes, and tried to sleep again.

The image of Muldoon smiling and blood on the snow seemed printed on the insides of Dick's eyelids. He opened them and stared into the dark, but he could still see it, and that lead to other memories of that cat-with-cream smile. Dick knew that if he just lay there and let those memories come that he would surely go mad. He pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes until his vision flared red, and made himself think of something else.

Dick drew a mental map of Haguenau, every 2nd Battalion position on this side of the river, and every known German position on the far side. He worked out the route the men would take the next day as they exchanged positions with 1st Battalion and fell into reserve, what he'd leave in place, and what they could expect to find. He listed what every trooper was supposed to have in his personal kit, and what items were in shortest supply, trying to remember the lists the company captains had drawn up. He wondered if there would be a way to put his billet next to Nix's again, because he didn't think he could sleep at all without Nix lying across the door like a drunken, over-sized guard dog. He wondered if he would ever sleep again. Tonight didn't seem likely.

He threw an arm over his eyes and sighed.

"Can't sleep?" Nix asked, voice rough and slurred with alcohol.

"No," Dick answered redundantly.

"Me neither."

They both paused: Dick taking an odd sort of comfort in that bit of solidarity; Nix presumably neither awake nor sober enough to string more than two words together.

"You don't have to look after me, Lew," Dick said. It felt easier to have this conversation here in the dark, where he had an excuse for not meeting Nix's eyes, and when Nix was probably a little too drunk to remember exactly what he said.

"Yeah, I do," Nix answered. He was coming to, which wasn't what Dick had wanted. "Been looking after you since Benning. Can't stop now."

"I'm not the same man I was at OCS. I don't know if..." he broke off, not sure if he meant to say "if I'm a man at all," or "if I ever will be again," or something else just as betraying. They were all too much to say, even in the dark.

"I don't care," Nix insisted, angry now. "Dick, I don't care what you think of yourself. I know who you are."

Dick didn't reply. He knew that Nix wouldn't say that if he knew what Dick had let Muldoon do to him, and that Nix didn't really believe what he'd said anyway. If Nix's feelings about Dick hadn't changed, why hadn't he shown the least sign of wanting Dick the way he had before? Not that Dick wanted him to. He didn't think he could stand to let someone touch him like that, not even Nix. He added hypocrisy to his list of newly discovered flaws, along with neediness, lack of focus, indecisiveness, lethargy, and an sudden fits of wanting to curl up and cry.

"Dick?" Nix asked after some time. "You still awake?"

"Clearly," Dick replied, wondering if maybe he should have stuck to his assigned billet. It wasn't like he was sleeping anyway. When Nix didn't say anything else, he demanded, "What?"

"I don't know. I like your voice. Tell me something."

"Nix, I'm trying to sleep."

"No you're not."

Dick sighed again and stared up into the dark. He didn't want to talk about old times—either battles fought or moments of pleasure he knew he wouldn't experience again—and he didn't want to talk about home, because he didn't want to pull down his parents or his sister into this drab, sordid place. "You remember that propaganda movie about the Soviet partisans in '41?" he asked, finally.

"The one where they all got run over by the flaming tank at the end? I remember thinking it was too bad all the decent actors joined up. The ballerina was all right."

"There was a part where the leader of the partisans was talking to the ballerina, telling her about what he used to do before the war. He said that he used to build bridges and dams and be proud of his work. But since the Germans came, all he knew how to do was destroy, and when that made him want to weep, he went and looked for something else to destroy until he felt better." The young actor had looked painfully earnest, holding onto his plaster-of-Paris tree and staring out over the matte-painted battlefield, but the soliloquy itself had stuck with Dick.

Nix's laughter warmed the dark. "And then the ballerina slept with him. Not a bad line."

"He said that after she slept with him," Dick corrected. They'd seen the movie between Normandy and Holland, and Dick had mostly been wondering how the partisans were so clean.

Nix silence conveyed that he hadn't cared about the movie enough to pay attention in the first place, let alone remember the plot. Then he groaned and Dick heard the cot squeak and his feet hit the floor as he sat up. "Dick, I've never seen you happy about killing. Satisfied to get the job done, relieved the men got through, proud of your team, sure, but not happy."

"I wish we were jumping into Berlin," Dick said, not moving. "I wish I could feel like I did when we took the guns at Brécourt." He paused, not sure how to summarise the whirl of emotions he'd felt after his first day in combat. "Knowing that I'd proved I was the kind of man I wanted to be." Not like Sobel.

"Well, I'd go," Nix said. "Let's do it. Let's jump into Berlin. Get this war over with and go home."

Dick didn't want any of that. He didn't want Nix to keep risking himself for Dick, he didn't want to drag his men into more combat when all they wanted was rest. He'd prayed to God on D-Day, asking Him to let him survive this war, and promising in return to work the land and never make war again. "I don't think I can go home now," he said.

"Then we'll travel," Nix promised him. "Work tramp steamers like a couple of bums. You said you wanted to see the world. So we jump into Berlin, shoot Hitler, win the war, and then sail the Seven Seas."

Every part of that sounded impossible to Dick, but maybe it was imagining anything at all beyond the next day's troop movements that was impossible. "You don't have to follow me into hell, Nix." Though it was too late: Nix had already followed him first into war, and now into depravity and murder.

"Sure I do. How would you find it without me?"

"I seem to have managed it okay," Dick answered, then regretted revealing so much.

"You're not damned," Nix said, and his voice was ferocious. It filled the room, and made Dick cringe. "Other than being an arrogant, stubborn son of a bitch who can never admit that he needs help, there's no sin in you. For Christ's sake, you're not me."

Dick rolled back onto his side and didn't answer. This whole thing had happened because he'd given into wanting what he never should have had. Something Nix now seemed to regret, and even if he didn't, that he didn't want again. Not like Dick still did. Maybe Muldoon had been the price he'd had to pay for that weakness. Dick wasn't Catholic, but he could see the appeal of believing that earthly penance could balance sin, even if he knew there could be no justification of one's soul in the end, only humility and the hope contained in His promise of mercy.

It didn't feel like there was a merciful God right now, and Dick didn't feel like he was going to be able to stop being selfish. Not when all his heart wanted was to beg Nix to promise never to leave him, or to kiss him, or to tell him that some day he'd stop looking at Dick like he was broken, even if it was true. The worst part was that he knew that if he asked any of those things, Nix would do them or die trying, out of loyalty to what they'd been, or obligation for what Dick had done.

Dick closed his eyes again, but he only drifted in and out of sleep, and was troubled by dreams.

* * *

The next day, Dick was so caught up in the work of redeployment that he hardly had time to think. Nix had disappeared to regimental HQ first thing, and Dick didn't see him for the rest of the day. He wasn't sure if that was because Sink was trying to keep a leash on Nix and his newfound quasi sobriety, because Nix was trying to see how Dick did left on his own for a day, or because after the intensity of the previous night's conversation Nix had decided to avoid him.

In truth, they only moved a few miles back from the line, taking over the small town that 1st battalion had been occupying. Somehow that seemed to take more time than their long marches into Alsace had in the first place, and certainly seemed to involve the quartermasters complaining about more lost equipment, and in a few cases lost soldiers. They had more or less everyone rounded up, fed and billeted by sunset, in any case, and Dick gave orders to let as many men as possible sleep as long as they liked. He felt safe enough in the shadow of 1st Battalion, with the Moder River between them in the enemy, to set only light guards.

It was only when he got his billet assignment from Zielinski that it struck him that of course Nix had stayed in Haguenau with regimental HQ. There was no reason for him to move billets just because Dick had to.

Dick was in a bedroom at the back of what had been a manor house before 1st had been in it for a few weeks, and his footlocker had made it there before he had. He lifted the tray to check for alcohol, expecting that Nix had cleared out. He hadn't. Dick stared at the gleaming necks of two bottles of Vat 69 that Nix had gotten somewhere in all this—his scrounging abilities really were excellent—and wondered what the hell it meant. Had he forgotten them in the scramble of that morning, or left them on purpose, and, if he'd left them, why?

"Dick?"

Dick started badly, whirling into a defensive crouch, and staring wide eyed for a moment before he realised that the shadow in the doorway was just Harry. He'd found a fresh uniform and looked as neat as he ever had, but was leaning against the jamb to keep weight of his leg. Dick had never been happier to see anyone. "When'd they let you out?"

"Three days ago," Harry said. He came in, pulling the door shut behind him, and flopped onto Dick's bed, making the springs squeak. "Took me two days to get here from Mourmelon, and then I spent most of today going in circles looking for you. Finally ran into Nix at HQ, and he pointed me up here."

"It's been a busy day," Dick said. He'd knelt to put his locker back together so he could sit on it, when he realised that he could offer Harry a drink, and only feel a little guilty about dipping into Nix's stash. He held the open bottle out, and shrugged slightly when Harry raised an eyebrow.

Never a man to protest the offer of free booze, Harry took a swing before passing it back. "Don't tell me I've been gone for a month, and you've started drinking!"

"No," Dick said, though he didn't put the bottle back for a moment, instead watching the shine of the lamplight on the dark glass. "No, Nix must have forgot to get these before we pulled out."

Harry laughed. "That or he's planning to sleep on your floor tonight. But, I tell you, sounds like the time you've had without me, no one would blame you picking up a few vices."

"It's been a busy month," Dick amended his earlier comment. "We lost a lot of the boys in the Ardennes, and Buck, and then straight on here, with shelling for the last week." He rubbed his eyes. "I wrote you about most of it, I think."

"I heard you had a new CO?" Harry asked, and Dick could guess from his tone that he'd either gotten some kind of scuttlebutt or a briefing from Nix, and was now looking for Dick's take more than actual details.

"Briefly," Dick said "I'm acting commander, now."

"That's what Nix said. Congratulations!" Harry took that as an excuse to lean down and reclaim the bottle. He toasted Dick before taking another swig. "I'd watch out. Two colonels in one week, people are going to start saying 2nd battalion's cursed."

"Oh, they already are," Dick said. They were probably also saying he was either cursed or peculiarly lucky. Every single one of his promotions had come as a result of the untimely injury or death of his CO, which wasn't unusual in an infantry company, but would start to raise eyebrows with field-grade officers.

"I hope you keep it," Harry said with feeling. "Last thing we need is another command shake up."

"Yeah," Dick said. He settled onto the floor, putting his back to the locker. "We've had more than enough of those, with Easy alone."

Harry wanted to hear about the eventual fate of Foxhole Norman, and Dick ended up sketching out everything that had happened since the Christmas Eve shelling, including all the details that he hadn't bothered trying to get past the mail censors. As he talked, he felt himself relaxing against the locker. So many of the events he described were horrific, but having Harry here and alive and listening to him seemed to lift a little of the weight he'd been carrying. "Then Strayer got hit when an Fw took a shot at the convoy, so we ended up with a lieutenant colonel from the 17th, some kind of political transfer, but he..." He trailed off. He didn't think he could lie to Harry, not tonight, and maybe not ever, but he wouldn't make him an accessory after the fact, either.

"And you're acting commander now," Harry finished for him. "I talked to Lip at the Easy CP." He fished through his pockets until he found a paper. "Which reminds me, Sink gave me this to pass onto you, said he meant to give it to you this morning, but you cleared out so fast." Dick took it. It was an approval for Lipton's honourable discharge, and his commission. "Sounds like Haguenau is a hell of a town."

"Yeah," Dick said, then couldn't think of anything to add to that. He folded the papers into his shirt pocket. They'd keep until morning.

"So," Harry let the word hang, and when Dick didn't take it up, he sighed and took another drink before leaning forward with his elbows on his knees. "So I had the exact same conversation twice today, had it with both Nix and Lip. It went, 'Hey, Harry, good to see you back. How's the leg? Have you seen Dick yet? No, well why don't you go say hi? He'd be glad to see you,' and then they give me the strangest goddam look, like there's something wrong with you, but they won't say what. So I come here, and other than being a jumpy son of a bitch—which by this point, are there any of us who ain't?—you're same old Dick Winters."

"Good to hear your assessment, doc," Dick said. Nix he'd half expected to keep tabs, if not this obviously, but it was strangely gratifying to hear that Lipton was sending spies into his camp.

Harry wasn't done. "Same old Dick Winters, until I mention our four-day-wonder lieutenant colonel, or Haguenau, and then he mysteriously transforms into a clam."

"It was a long four days," Dick said, and tried to think how to explain to Harry without stepping on either side of the truth. He took the bottle back, rolling it between his palms. "We, uh, we lost half a patrol from Dog, some West Point kid leading it, and they got shot up one side of the river and down the other. I, uh... I didn't take it well. I hadn't been sleeping; Nix and I were at each other about... anyway, looking at that kid's body, I thought for a minute it was Nix—I don't know why, didn't look anything like him—but I looked at that ruined body, and I saw Nix. I froze up, Harry, like Dike in that field. Lip got me out of there before too many of the men saw, but word got around. Now they've all been watching me like I'm going to crack up next time I hear a jeep backfire."

"Are you?" Harry's candour made Dick glance up sharply. Harry had that little gap-toothed smile that always meant trouble for someone, usually Dick, and Dick found himself smiling back even before Harry said, "Because the way I figure it, I'm just about your XO right now, for all the staff you have left. If you start weaving baskets, that'll put me in charge of 2nd Battalion."

Dick let his head fall back until it found the open lid of the footlocker. "I'm not cracking up, Harry," he said, and oddly he actually believed it. "And you don't want the job. I don't know if you've heard, but it's cursed." That might be true as well, or maybe it was just Dick.

Harry laughed, and the familiar sound warmed Dick through to his heart. "You can take the heat, but save some of the glory for me."

"Oh, you can have all of it," Dick said. "If we're lucky, there won't be much more to go around." The Soviets had crossed into Germany a week ago, Dick expected there'd be an airborne drop across the Rhine in a month. He hoped they got some rest before that. "I'm so tired, Harry."

"Yeah, me too." Harry's lighter clicked, and then Dick smelled cigarette smoke. "So what were you and Nix at each other about? Year and a half since I transferred in, and I've never seen you two fight."

Dick shook his head. How had he been so stupid? He'd thought he was protecting Nix, but looking back on it, he'd just played right into Muldoon's hands, and hurt both of them for no reason. If he'd gone straight to Nix and told him the truth that first morning, maybe they would have come to the same conclusions, maybe Fitzpatrick and Gall would be alive. Maybe Nix would still want to be with Dick. He dropped his head and rubbed his eyes. He hadn't noticed the headache creeping back in, but now it was ringing through his temples with every heartbeat.

Harry whistled. "That must have been some argument. Sorry I missed it. But you two, you're okay now? That'd be like splitting up Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday. Wait, is that why you're giving me his whiskey, I don't want to take sides. I'd feel bad."

"No you wouldn't," Dick said from behind his hands. "And we're okay. It was a misunderstanding."

"In that case...." Cigarette smoke swirled around Dick as Harry leaned into reclaim the bottle.

Dick opened his eyes and watched Harry take another pull. He should find some glasses, if his room was going to end up being where Harry and Nix did most of their drinking, if Nix came back at all. "It's good to have you back, Harry."

"That's what everyone keeps saying. I should get blown up more often; makes people glad to see you."

"Please don't," Dick said. He pulled the bottle away and knelt to tuck it back into the locker.

"Well, if you insist." Harry rose as well, then reached down to pull Dick to his feet, which was enough of a see-saw with his bad leg that they both nearly overbalanced and tumbled onto the bed—which wasn't a light in which Dick had ever considered Harry. They got themselves untangled, and Harry squeezed his Dick's arm before he limped back towards the door. "Try get some sleep, huh?"

Dick nodded, but when Harry was gone he stood for a moment considering his options. He had a soft bed and clean sheets, a house secure behind the line, and a door with a lock on it. He pushed his footlocker in front of the door, and wished Nix were there, sleeping across the threshold as he had the last two nights. He wished Nix would let Dick curl up in his arms, too, but it seemed those days were over. Sighing, Dick stripped and climbed between the cold sheets, and did his best to sleep.

* * *

He dreamed he was back on the line outside Bastogne, snow crunching under his feet. It was just before dawn, and a little pink light was catching in the treetops. Dick saw the battalion CP and turned towards it. He was looking for Lew, and he'd be in that foxhole of his. Maybe Dick could curl up next to him and catch a few hours of sleep. The cover of the foxhole was thick with icy snow, like it hadn't been disturbed all night, which was wrong. Lew should have been up to take his turn on the line.

He heard sounds from under the tarpaulin, a moan, and a slow clapping, and Dick knew he shouldn't pull back the cover, knew absolutely that he didn't want to see what was underneath, but his hand seemed to move of its own accord.

He took the edge, and pulled the canvas back, snow flaking off in sheets. The sun cleared the trees just as he lifted it high enough to see in, illuminating the foxhole save for the dark steak of Dick's shadow. It was Lew who was moaning. He lay on his back with his legs spread while Muldoon knelt between them and thrust into him over and over again, their flesh slapping together. Lew's face was screwed up, eyes closed, and Dick couldn't tell if it was in pleasure or pain. He wanted to call out, but he found himself frozen in place, holding the tarp up and watching. Finally Muldoon grunted and went still. He kissed Lew roughly, and when he pulled away, Lew's eyes were open and staring up at Dick, his expression blank, lost, and full of accusation.

Dick didn't bother trying to sleep again after that, but got up and put himself to work setting up his CP. Zielinski came in to make coffee four hours later, and looked at Dick with that same sympathetic expression that was on everyone's face these days. Dick considered transferring him, trying to get an orderly who just did his job and didn't care what happened to Dick, but that wouldn't be fair to the kid. 

"Gosh. We're going to be the most organised battalion in the whole army," was all Zielinski said, however, and they got back to work.

Dick didn't see Nix all that day, and he was in the middle of trying to decide if he should be worried that he'd fallen in the river, or glad that he wasn't hovering, or worried why he wasn't hovering, when Harry made some excuse to run down to regiment, and said he'd find out. They'd just finished commissioning Lip, and for once Dick was out of things to approve or requisition, and was starting to wonder how he was going to fill the rest of the afternoon. He could only inspect the billets so many times before the company officers started wondering if the 2nd Battalion's curse was such a bad thing.

"Why don't you come?" Harry asked. "It's a twenty-minute drive even when the roads are jammed up."

"No, I've got to..." Dick gestured back at his desk, which was immaculate. "I've got work to do here, but I'll give you my status report for Col. Sink."

"Right," Harry said, but didn't press. He glanced at Zielinski, who was working well within earshot, then shook his head and left Dick to his own devices.

Nix had found a way to check in with 2nd Battalion multiple times every day when they were on the line, even when no one would expect that kind of detailed support from a regimental S3. If he'd wanted to check up on Dick, he'd have found a reason to drift through by now. If he hadn't found a reason, he was deliberately avoiding either the whole battalion, or its commander. Dick didn't have a lot of trouble working out why that might be, and had no plans to press the issue. He'd laid too much on Nix over the last few days.

He ended up curling up on the sofa in his office, having to almost hug his knees to keep his legs from dangling off the end, and passing out for a nap. If he dreamed, he didn't remember it.

Harry came back in a few hours later. "Hard at work, I see," he said, and took over Dick's desk chair, lighting a cigarette. Dick could smell alcohol on his breath even over the tobacco, but he didn't seem especially inebriated.

"How's Regiment?" Dick asked. "1st holding in all right?"

"Everyone's snug as a bug." Harry tipped his ash and considered Dick. "I thought you said you and Nix kissed and made up."

"What?" Dick pushed himself up on one elbow and blinked against the lamplight.

"So why is Nix drunker than a marine on an eight-hour pass?"

"What?" Dick said again.

"He's staring at the river and drinking schnapps. It's awful."

Dick rubbed his eyes and tried to line up that information with why he thought Nix was sticking to Haguenau and avoiding Dick, but his thoughts were still clouded with sleep and fatigue. "What?"

"I told him he should come up here, find your footlocker, at least get wasted on something decent," Harry continued, "and he said he couldn't, then wouldn't say why the hell not."

"I..." Dick shook his head. None of this was making any sense. "I don't know."

"Well, I'm not playing messenger, just so you know," Harry said. "You two can sort this out on your own. Hopefully soon."

"Right," Dick said. He tried to rub the sleep out of his eyes, but ended up with his face in his hands, struggling to think. "I will."

Once he figured out what to say.

Harry shook his head and got up to leave. "I take it back. I'm never getting wounded again. I'm gone for a month, and the whole battalion goes to hell."

Dick sat on the sofa for a few minutes, wondering what the hell had happened. He'd thought that Nix was tired of holding his hand, and tired the pressure put upon him by Dick's fragility. At best, Nix might have hoping that Dick could stand on his own if given the chance—and Dick had to admit that that had at least partly worked out. At worst, Dick was afraid that Nix was still angry at him for letting Muldoon get between them, disappointed by his weakness and stupidity in agreeing to sell himself, repelled by the thought of what Dick had let Muldoon do to him, and guilty for feeling any of that about a man he believed he owed. Nix was too good a man to easily abandon a friend, even one who was no longer worth keeping, but even he would only stick around a lost cause so long.

Normally, Dick would have let Nix sort himself out. The Lord knew that trying to talk to him when he was drunk was like wrestling an octopus while underwater. However, if he'd been deep enough in the gutter to alarm Harry—who had once drunk so much Calvados that he's passed out in the middle of a road, while under German fire—then Dick should be worried too. Sink was only going to put up with so much, no matter how good at his job Nix was, or how fond he was of his remaining Toccoa boys. Dick would just have to go down there and somehow convince an utterly soused Lewis Nixon that Dick wasn't his problem any more, and that he didn't have to feel guilty for not wanting to be his shadow every moment of every day.

* * *

Dick caught up with Harry, put him in charge for the next few hours, and got a jeep out of the motorpool. He probably could have caught a ride with any number of trucks, now that the supply lines seemed to have found them, but he didn't think he could keep company with some chatty logistics division corporal, not even for the short ride into Haguenau. The I-Company checkpoints waved him through until he was as close to the river as the roads would allow.

He didn't have to ask where Nix was. Dick knew exactly which OP Harry had meant: that quiet former Easy one that had been made redundant but an MG placement with a better angle on the far bank. Most times, Dick have found the little hole-in-the-wall cafe they'd taken over either entirely empty, or staffed only by someone who wanted some time to themselves. He'd been standing there himself a few days before.

He took a deep breath before walking in. He spent the whole drive over working out what to say, but planned speeches rarely survived first contact with Nix, especially not when he was on the sauce.

Nix wasn't looking at the river. He was sitting on the floor, hand on an empty bottle, leaning back against the wall under the window. The top of his helmet just cleared the sill. Dick could have found an clearer way to ask German snipers to try shoot him in the head, but it would have involved sending a note. Without saying anything, he crossed the room and yanked Nix sideways towards the counter. Nix responded by pitching face first into Dick's lap. "For crying out loud," Dick muttered, and grabbed Nix by the collar and dragged him to the back corner where he'd be easier to prop up.

In the two and a half years Dick had known him, he'd only seen Nix drink himself completely unconscious enough times to count on one hand. The other four had involved celebrations, overdue passes, and their first night back in England after Normandy. 

"Should have left this until tomorrow," Dick muttered, but by then someone might have taken the obvious potshot, and he'd have come in her to find Nix's brains spread across the floor. "Were you trying to get yourself killed?"

He had meant it to be rhetorical, but Nix cracked an eye and muttered. "Don't think so."

Dick slid down to the floor next to Nix, letting their boots touch. "Not what it looked like to me."

"Needed to stop thinking," Nix explained. His head lolled forward, but before he passed out, he muttered, "Keep thinking about you. Gotta stop."

Shaking Nix's shoulder didn't wake him again, so Dick just let him lie. He knew from experience that he'd nap for a couple hours, then need to drink about a gallon of water and piss before he crashed again. All Dick had to do was wait.

Dick pulled off his helmet and let his head rest against the wall. Nix's head was at an awful angle, and his neck was going to kill him when he woke, but Dick couldn't think of how to reposition him save to pull him over against his Dick's shoulder, and he didn't think that would be welcome. Nix's stiff neck had got him here, he might as well live with it in reality.

What were they going to do? They still had the invasion of Germany ahead, and Dick didn't think either of them were capable of that kind of focus under pressure right now. Dick had apparently proven that he could move a battalion back to reserve, but what would happen if the 101st led another jump? Would Dick be less of a _jumpy son of a bitch_ in a week? What about in a month? What if he'd lost his nerve? He didn't know any way to test that save being under fire, and then it could well be too late.

And Nix... Dick closed his eyes and banged his head lightly against the wall. Not more than a week ago, he'd been trying to work out how to spend the rest of his life with Nix. He'd been starting to let himself hope that if they'd made it through the Ardennes, they might just make it through the whole war. All this had been to save Nix, and now Dick seemed to have destroyed both of them. When Nix woke, Dick was going to have to find way some way to convince him that none of this was his fault, and that there was nothing left in Dick that was worth drinking himself to death over. Nix was smart, he'd work out a new purpose in the regiment that didn't involve being Dick's guardian angel.

Dick would just have to find his own way forward without one.

* * *

Dick didn't know when he'd drifted off but he woke slowly, with something soft under his cheek and a hand stroking through his hair. He froze, breath catching. All he could see were olive drab pants, and all he could feel were the fingers brushing his hair back away from his forehead over and over again. This had to be a dream. He'd killed Muldoon. He had. He'd died in blood and struggle in Dick's arms, while Dick held him down and made sure he couldn't get away. He couldn't be back now, but Dick couldn't escape the scratch of wool on his cheeks and the stroke of fingers through his hair, pulling him back into that first night in Muldoon's room. It would be soon now that he'd have to submit to whatever horrors Muldoon had planned for him; soon he'd have to sacrifice another piece of himself.

He couldn't do it. Not again. He slammed his head back into Muldoon's stomach and rolled forward and away from him, coming up into a crouch with his pistol drawn and aimed straight at...

Dick blinked hard, seeing black hair instead of grey, and a familiar voice muttering, "For Christ's sake!" between winded gasps.

"Nix?" It was Nix. He was half doubled over and looking up at Dick with wide, horrified eyes. Dick almost dropped the pistol, but instead made himself point it at the floor, safe it, and holster it.

Nix was starting to catch his breath, but still looked stunned. He was likely still half drunk, and certainly not thinking at his usual speed. He didn't seem to be able to speak.

"Lew, are you all right?" Dick asked. He'd rolled to his knees and was holding his hands out in front of him, half indication that he wasn't armed, half calming gesture. "I didn't hurt you, did I?"

"Had it coming," Nix wheezed. "Sorry. Shouldn't have..." He rubbed his hand over his mouth, like he'd just vomited, and then shook his head. "I woke up, and you were sleeping on me. Thought I was dreaming. But you felt real. Your hair felt nice, and... I'm sorry, Dick. Should have known better."

"We could have been seen," Dick snapped, and then realised that wasn't the real problem. "Nix, you can't just..." pet his hair, touch him, kiss him, talk to him at all? Dick's heart ached at how much he wanted Nix's touch, but this wasn't working. He'd just pulled a gun on the man he loved, his best friend, because he'd been careless enough to fall asleep near him. What if he'd pulled the trigger? He may as well have turned the gun on himself then. "I think it would be better if we kept our relationship professional: regimental S3 to battalion commander. Do you think you can do that?"

Nix sucked in a breath so hard he choked, and then doubled over coughing. Dick felt a twinge of unease, remembering doubling over in front of Muldoon, choking on the come that filled his mouth and covered his face. He didn't want Nix to get in trouble, but of course that thought was ridiculous. Dick was the only person hurting Nix right now. It seemed like he was always hurting Nix.

"That's what I was trying to do," Nix said, when he finally caught his breath again. He pulled his knees up and folded his arms tightly across his chest. "You were the one who showed up here and fell asleep in my lap, then almost shot me."

"Harry was worried about you," Dick said defensively. "Then I... uh... I thought you were someone else."

Nix huddled in on himself. He opened his mouth to ask a question that Dick already knew he wouldn't answer, then closed it again. "Jesus Christ," he whispered, almost to himself. "I'm sorry."

"You couldn't have known," Dick told him. "It would have been fine, before..." He hadn't quite realised how stark the line between before and after was going to be, not until he also understood that Nix was going to be on the other side of it.

"I miss before," Nix said. He was hugging his knees now, long legs coming up to his chin, so that all Dick could see between his ODs and his uncombed mob of dark hair was black stubble and wide brown eyes standing in relief to the pallor of his skin.

Looking at him made Dick feel immensely tired, so he turned away and stared at the patch of grey sky visible through the shattered window. "Yeah," he said, "me too."

"I..." he heard Nix swallow. "Dick, I'll do anything you want."

The worst part is that he would. If Dick said he wanted Nix back, he knew Nix let Dick touch him any way he wanted to—he'd let Dick treat him like Muldoon had treated Dick—but it would be out of penance, not love. No, it would hurt far less to just end it, to never talk to Nix about anything that wasn't an operational requirement. "I want you to be all right," Dick said.

Nix laughed, and the sound made Dick hug himself and shiver. "Oh, don't worry about me. No, sir. I'll be fine," he said, and Dick would have given up his commission then and there if it would have taken the self-loathing out of Nix's voice.

"Please, Nix," Dick said, and he was almost stupid enough to add that he'd done what he'd done so that Nix would be okay, and that he wouldn't be able to stand it if he didn't promise he would be, and to keep that promise, but he wasn't quite that cruel. Even if he wanted to be, even if he wanted to tell Nix to stop being a selfish idiot for once in his life. Then he felt the pistol that he'd just drawn on his best friend hanging heavy at his hip, and felt awful.

"Fine. I'll be a good boy." Nix cast around the room, saw the empty bottles and dropped his head to his knees. "I'll try," he amended, tone suddenly serious. "I can't promise, Dick. I can't."

Dick sighed and wished that achieving a professional relationship like he had with Lt. Davidson—or even Speirs—was possible. The truth was that they'd spent the whole war wrapped up in each other's lives—and on Dick's part a whole war falling in love. There could be no clean separation, not for them, and they both knew it. "Lew, your best has always been more than enough for me," Dick said.

Nix didn't answer, and Dick knew he must be thinking of how he'd failed to save Dick from Muldoon, and then failed to kill Muldoon so that Dick didn't have to, and how he'd just gotten so spectacularly drunk that he'd managed to worry Harry Welsh of all people.

There had to be some way to tell Nix that Dick didn't blame him for any of that, that he'd voluntarily taken on every burden he could spare Nix, and would take even the knowledge of this, if he could. He would rather endure this alone—would rather still be quite literally under Muldoon—then see Nix so broken up by a choice Dick had made. But he didn't know what to say. Words had never really been his best point, at least not ones that laid his heart open, and now even the risk felt insurmountable.

"I hate that he won," Nix said. He spoke so suddenly and after such a long pause that Dick started—face snapping around to look at Nix, though fortunately not drawing his weapon. Nix was looking up at him again, and the sorrow written on his face looked like a mirror of Dick's heart. "You killed the bastard; we're alive, but he still won."

Dick stared at him, and suddenly a flare of anger rose in him. He hadn't felt much besides grief and guilt in so long, but the idea of Muldoon victorious even in death sparked something in him that he couldn't quite put words to yet. "I'm glad he's dead," he said. "I've never felt that about anyone, not even Germans, but him? I'm glad."

"Yeah," Nix agreed. "So am I."

They both sat in silence again for a few minutes, until Nix said he had to piss and staggered out to find a wall. To Dick's relief, he turned away from the river, not towards it into the line of fire. Dick stood and stretched and checked his watch. He'd been gone for three hours. Harry would be sending out the hounds soon.

When Nix came back in a few minutes later, Dick held out his canteen and watched as Nix tipped it back and gulped down the whole thing. Dick watched a thread of water escape the corner of his mouth and shimmer down his neck, soaking his scarf. The image recalled strange sort of double memory. The first time he'd seen Nix at OCS, with sweat trickling down his neck in the Georgia sun, an incandescent moment when he tipped his canteen back and water splashed all over his face and hair. A moment when Dick had decided that he wanted to kiss 2nd Lt. Lewis Nixon. It also reminded Dick a frightened glimpse of himself in the mirror before he'd cleaned Muldoon's semen off his face, which was exactly why he knew that he and Nix wouldn't work any more. What Muldoon had done to him wouldn't just stain Dick from now on, it would reach back and ruin everything he'd ever had, and if Nix hadn't figured that out by now, it wouldn't take him long. Drunk or sober, he wasn't stupid.

Finishing the canteen, Nix wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and then caught Dick staring. "Ready to go?" he asked. He was still a little wobbly on his feet, but he must not have been quite as drunk as Dick thought if he planned to go back on duty.

"Sure," Dick said, and they left shoulder to shoulder. "I have a jeep. Give you a ride?"

Nix glanced sideways at him, and would have stepped off the curb into a shell crater if Dick hadn't caught his arm and pulled him back onto what was left of the pavement. They both stared at Dick's hand for a second before Nix looked up and their eyes met. Dick didn't let go of his arm. He couldn't.

"I'll walk," Nix said. "I can only handle so much professionalism at a stretch." He jerked out of Dick's hold, and walked away up towards Regimental HQ.

Dick stood frozen in place, watching Nix until he finally turned a corner and disappeared.

That was it then. The end of over two years of living in each other's pockets, of being in love. Dick put a hand to his mouth and struggled not to throw up. When the roil of nausea and pain in his gut settled down, he went back to the jeep and drove away from the river.

He'd gotten what he wanted, the promise form Nix not to keep trying to destroy himself, and an end to the ruins of relationship that could now only bring them both pain. Why did that feel like such a failure?


	8. Chapter 8

It was dusk by the time Dick got back, and Harry was waiting for him in his office, leaning back in Dick's chair with his feet on the desk, smoking. "I could get used to this XO gig," he said.

Dick looked at the stack of reports on the corner of his desk, and dropped into the other chair, saying, "I'm expecting Strayer back in a few days."

"We'll see," Harry replied, not moving and deliberately not looking at Dick. "So, how's Nix?"

"Drunk," Dick said, then paused on what to say next. Harry was rapidly figuring out that something was wrong, and Dick might as well tell him before he nosed around too much. "I think I got him to ease up a little, but I don't know if he can any more. Nixon and I... we're through, Harry."

"Haha," Harry said, but when Dick didn't laugh, he turned to look at him, and Dick's face must have convinced him, because he dropped his cigarette and whispered, "Fuck me. Really?"

It had been another tactical error, Dick realised, on top of all of his other ones, because he could never tell Harry why, and Harry would not let this go easily. "Yes," he said, "and I'd rather not beat it to death. We still have to work together."

"What the hell happened when I was gone?" Harry demanded, but Dick just shook his head. "Jesus, no wonder Nix is drinking like a fish. Did you kill his dog, too?"

"Not that I'm aware." It felt oddly gratifying to be blamed for this. Nix still seemed to think the whole thing was somehow his fault, no matter what Dick tried to tell him. Harry's assumption that it was Dick who'd ended the friendship had the lightening feeling of first hearing a truth long unspoken. Of course it was his fault. This whole mess was his fault. "You should, uh, keep checking in. Make sure he's okay."

Harry swung his legs down with enough force that his boots hit the floor with a thud. "I told you I ain't getting caught in the middle. This is worse than Fairbanks and Pickford."

Dick wanted to know which of them was Pickford, but didn't dare ask. "Good," he said. "You can take his whisky back."

"That's getting in the middle," Harry objected. "I don't know what the hell's wrong with you two, but you'd better get your heads on straight."

"I don't think that's going to happen," Dick said. "I'm sorry, Harry." He was sorry, too—sorry about the whole sorry mess—but that didn't mean he could see a way out of it.

Harry didn't say anything for a while, then he asked in a voice more serious than Dick had ever heard him use, "Dick, are you all right?"

Dick shook his head, more a negation of the conversation than an answer. "I'll be fine," he said shortly. He couldn't say it in a way that would make Harry believe him, but maybe he could at least convince him that he wouldn't—or couldn't—talk about it.

"Sure," Harry said, but he let it go, for the moment. "Well, you've got a bottle and a half of Vat 69 in your footlocker. If you ever get around to telling me about..."—he made a circular gesture that encompassed the whole theatre—"I'll be there."

Dick nodded, not able to put words of gratitude to Harry's offer. He had to clear his throat before saying, "Get out of my chair, Welsh. Some of have work to do."

"I told you that too: I don't want nothing but the glory."

* * *

Dick tried to sack out in his own billet that second night off the line, but the dreams came as soon as he closed his eyes, before he even drifted off, almost, and he had to get up again. He stayed up all that night reading the biography of Alexander the Great that Nix had lent him, reading until his vision swam and he had to blink hard to bring the words into focus. Then he napped for a few hours before dawn. His dreams swirled with platoons of paratroopers fighting elephants, and great golden monuments built to Lew—the closest of his friends, the only man who completely understood him—before throwing himself into the same grave.

When he got into his office, he put the book in a dispatch case bound for Regimental HQ, with no note save Nix's name. He kept the whiskey, though he couldn't have said why.

As 2nd Battalion settled into its new quarters, Dick should have found more time to rest, to catch up on sleep that he'd been missing since Bastogne, but he found himself engaging in one task after another, punctuated by occasional naps. Idleness was the enemy. If he settled for too long, he'd have time to think, and if he had time to think, he'd remember. He couldn't seem to look at a blank page—or a wall, or the sky—without images of the past week playing on it like he had a projector right behind him. They jumbled together: Muldoon's cock hanging limp from his ODs, the pattern of the rug as he lay across Muldoon's knee, blood streaks on pale flesh, Nix's face when he'd told him they'd been a mistake. And along with the images, a constant what if, what if, what if dripping in the back of his mind. By now, he'd thought of a thousand ways he could have been better, or smarter, or stronger. He could write an army publication on the topic by now: _Staff Officer's Field Manual: Organizational, Technical, and Logistical Problems in the Actions Taken by Capt. R. D. Winters, February 1945._ Too bad it would be classified _Need to Know_.

There was a poster he'd seen States side: a sailor drowning in a black sea, his hand outstretched to point accusingly at the reader. It read _Someone Talked!_ Dick thought of the frightened, angry look in the drowning man's eyes, and wondered if he were the one sinking into darkness, the one who'd talked, or both.

Dick realised that he was staring at the wall, and made himself get up and inspect the billets and mess again.

He needed to shake the habit of looking for Nix in every room he went into—checking his right shoulder and expecting him to be right there. He knew that Harry for one noticed the tick, just from the way he deliberately didn't say anything every time he caught Dick doing it, but he was worried that the others were starting to notice as well. He didn't know if Speirs or the noncoms drawing the wrong conclusion and assuming he was paranoid or drifting was worse than them suspecting the truth: that he felt like he'd lost a part of himself, only he kept trying to lean on it.

Harry was sticking too close, cracking wise and watching everything, but Dick didn't have the heart to find something else for him to do.

In truth, there wasn't much to do. The company captains were letting the men rest as much as they could rather than running drills, and battalion logistics was the only truly busy men.

Dick wished he weren't wishing for a battle. He was, in any case, in no shape to fight one.

That night, Harry came to him after dinner and passed him a small cardboard package. "Doc Roe said to take this," he said.

"What for?" Dick asked, though he knew the answer.

"So that you get some shut eye, and stop sleep-walking around quarters looking like Frankenstein's monster," Harry snapped, apparently at the end of his patience with Dick.

Dick stared at the package, remembering the air sickness pills of eight months ago. "I don't know."

"As a personal favour," Harry insisted. He stuffed the package in Dick's shirt pocket. "Before I have to get Toye's..." They both paused, and Dick saw a flash of the same guilt and longing that Dick felt every time he turned to find Nix not there. "To get some brass knuckles and knock you out the old-fashioned way."

"One night," Dick agreed. He knew he needed the sleep badly, and more importantly the battalion needed a commander who had slept for more than ninety minutes at a stretch. Nothing he'd tried himself had won any battles there.

After Harry was gone, Dick took one pill, then lay on his back with his hands folded on his chest, staring up into the darkness. He thought about that bead of sweat rolling down the shell of Muldoon's ear, how it had swayed on his earlobe with each thrust of Muldoon's body into Dick's. In the silent darkness of his own room, safe with the chair jambed under the handle, he could hear panting and the slap of Muldoon's thighs on his ass.

And then he dreamed of it for a long, long time, and was not able to wake.

* * *

The knock out pills made him feel groggy the next morning, but the edge of fog in his mind also forced him focus on each task as it came, which helped with not thinking. Dick had to admit that he'd looked better too, the dark circles fading, more colour in his cheeks. The box had had six pills in it, and Dick thought he'd keep using them, even if it meant admitting that he now needed help even to sleep.

"See," Harry said, when he wandered into Dick's office last in the morning, before he said anything like, "Good morning, sir."

"Thank you, Harry," he said with enough sincerity that Harry actually blushed and looked away. "I'm glad you're back."

"How about me?" Lt. Col. Strayer was standing in the door, looking paler than Dick, and leaning on the jamb, but alive and standing.

Dick shot to his feet and saluted, then crossed to shake Strayer's hand. "I'm glad you're back too, sir!"

Strayer looked a little taken aback by Dick's enthusiasm, but his handshake was strong, and he grinned back at Dick. "I know you weren't expecting me for a few day, but I snuck out a little early," he said, and explained that his injuries had chiefly been a long shrapnel laceration across his back and a broken rib. "And those will hurt like a bastard in the hospital same as here," he concluded. Dick didn't know if that was true, but he supposed that Strayer would leave any actual battle manoeuvrers to Dick, as he always did, and 2nd Battalion was in reserve, in any case.

"I appreciate it, sir," Dick said. He gestured Strayer down into Harry's seat, and stayed standing at ease. "I, uh, also appreciate what you did when that bomb hit, taking that shrapnel blast for me. You probably saved my life."

"I'm sure I didn't," Strayer said, but he looked pleased.

"It doesn't mean any less," Dick said, and then paused. He realised that if Strayer hadn't pushed him down, that Dick might well have been killed, or Strayer not been hurt, or any of a constellation of possibilities that would have led to Muldoon not being assigned to the 101st. That was a hell of a thing to be grateful for. If he'd been given a choice at the time, knowing where each path would take him, would he have let Strayer push him to the ground, or turned and walked into the flames? Which would have made a greater coward of him?

Fortunately, Harry took up the gap in conversation with, "It sounds like we missed some action, sir." He then rattled off a reasonable summary of events he hadn't witnessed, treading lightly around the acting CO.

Dick let Harry run with the story, interrupting only to mention that he was writing a commendation for Sgt. Martin for his grace under fire in Easy's final patrol. Strayer seemed satisfied, as he usually did with Dick's command decisions, though saddened to hear about Gall and Fitzpatrick.

"Come with me to the mess?" he asked, and Dick nodded, more out of fellowship than hunger. He hadn't felt much like eating all day, and he didn't know if it was Doc Roe's pills or a more general malaise. He gave Strayer a hand up, and Harry followed them out.

The mess was an old factory floor, with room to feed a company at a time. At standing capacity, it could fit about three quarters of the battalion.

Which, when Strayer led Dick in, it was doing. Dick searched for Nix with the other officers at the front of the room, but didn't see anyone from Regiment. He did see a set up, but Harry was behind him, and Strayer was already stepping up onto a platform next to the door. Dick felt himself being herded up after him, and let it happen. This had been a spectacular intelligence failure on his part.

Strayer was saying something about being glad to be back, and not being much for speeches, that having been Col. Sink's area. "So, I'll make this short," he said. "I've brought you together to recognise the courage, intelligence and sacrifice of one of the finest officers with whom I've had the privilege to serve." Dick felt Harry's elbow in his back, nudging him towards the centre of the platform, and wondered if he'd been in on this from the start, or if he was improvising at Dick's expense. "You all know him," Strayer continued. "He's been with the 2nd Battalion of the 506th PIR since its inception, with you through Normandy, with you though Holland, and with you through Belgium, on the line every time you've been on the line, and leading the charge every chance he got. I give you, Major Richard D. Winters."

The heartfelt cheers of the men shook the roof, and rocked Dick back on his heels. He hardly felt Strayer unpinning his captain's bars from his collar and pinning in their place the gold oak-leaf cluster of a major. He felt too overwhelmed to say anything, but the men didn't seem to expect him to. This wasn't any of a dozen tedious stuffed-shirt staff officer presentations that he'd had to sit through over the years, or even the embarrassment mixed quite pride he'd felt when Gen. Bradley had presented him with the Distinguished Service Cross in front of the press. This was 2nd Battalion celebrating its victories and its survival, and for some reason literally pinning that to Dick.

Harry saluted him, and then clapped a hand to his back so hard it almost knocked the wind out of him, at the same time Strayer was shaking his hand, and Dick realised he was blushing and grinning at once. He felt good. He made himself not think about the last time he'd felt this good, and made himself not look for Nix, who of course wasn't there, but scanned the faces in front of him and thanked God for every man who was there, and quietly mourned every man who wasn't. He tried to fix the memory of their faces in his mind like a photograph.

Then the sergeants were yelling at everyone to fall out and clear the mess so that D Company could eat, goddammit, and Speirs had jumped up on the platform to salute and shake his hand, with McMillan close behind. Dick was still smiling, and caught between embarrassment at the fuss and the same jubilation at the battalion's survival.

He didn't know what to say to any of them, but none of them seemed to care.

He cast one last look out over the men as they broke into platoons and began to either file out or to reorder the mess, and could swear he saw a familiar figure leaning in the doorway at the back. Then McMillan stepped into his view, and when Dick looked again, either Nix was gone, or he hadn't been there at all.

Dick almost jumped off the platform and started across the mess, but there was no way he would catch up now, and even if he did, how would that look in the face of his request for professional distance. He wished he could be sure of what he'd seen, but couldn't ask any of the others. Instead he milled with Strayer and the Dog Company officers and waited for his turn in the chow line.

"Thank you," he said to Strayer when he had a chance to talk to him aside. "I think the men needed some good news, for a change." Their joy on his behalf still set him back, but he was starting to gather it in, wrapping the feeling around himself like a winter coat.

Strayer smiled at him fondly. "That's about what Bob Sink said about you," he said. "It's overdue."

Was it? Dick had only just made captain after holding the line at Carentan, but that felt like it had been seven years ago, not a little over seven months. Strayer must feel the same, especially having just been in hospital. "Thank you," Dick said again. It felt like all he knew how to say, but maybe it was all the words he needed. Nix would be laughing himself silly right now at how tongue tied and earnest Dick was. Dick hoped he still was. Nix's laugh had been the second thing he'd fallen for, that day they'd met.

He knew now more than ever that he needed to make sure that no one other than Nix ever found out what he had done. He knew that these men would not be cheering for the kind of officer—or man—he had proven to be over the last week. But if it was the illusion of his strength that was helping hold them together, he wouldn't take that away from them. As he packed back his dish of rehydrated something or other, he tried not to think about the lines between self-sacrifice, self-aggrandisement, and hypocrisy.

* * *

That night, Dick took the sleeping pill half an hour before he meant to go to bed, and waited until he couldn't keep his eyes open before he gave up on his book and lay down. If he dreamed, he didn't remember it, but he still woke up feeling like his head was full of cotton. He felt like he took an age shaving, and ended up almost missing the staff officers' section of the chow line.

Strayer was already tucking into something looked like toast and something else that decidedly did not look like eggs. He didn't look a lot more awake than Dick felt, despite steady coffee intake, and Dick was glad for the comfortable silence between them as he sat down.

Strayer finally broke it, saying, "Had a lot of time to think in that hospital, when I wasn't just staring at the pretty colours on the floor that is."

"Is that so, sir?" Dick ventured cautiously. Strayer had never struck him as an introspective type, but he supposed spending ten days lying on your stomach with a morphine drip in your arm could do that to a man.

"About the army," Strayer said. "I'm a career man, you know. Son of a career man, grandson of another."

Dick did know. It had been abundantly clear since Dick had met him. Strayer's ability to tolerate and sometimes even play at army politics had always set him and Dick apart. "You joined in '38, didn't you, sir?" Dick asked, though he already knew the answer.

Strayer nodded, "And they'll probably haul me out feet first, hell they just about did, but a purple heart looks good in your jacket." He took a long swallow of coffee, while they both considered that, then he asked Dick, "Have you thought about what you're going to do?"

"After the war?" Dick asked.

"Or you have enough points to get out," Strayer said.

"I won't leave my men." That much Dick knew for certain. "But after? Assuming I make it? I haven't had time to think about it, sir." 

"You're field-grade now, Dick. DSC, three campaign stars, you could be a full-bird colonel in a few years, if you play your cards right."

Dick wasn't sure that there was a single thing he'd enjoy less than spending a hundred percent of his time dealing with the army and none at all dealing with the soldiers in his command. Then he wondered if he was fit for much else besides soldiering. His dream of a quiet life working the land felt even further away than ever. It didn't seem like the war would outlast the year, but after that, what? _So we jump into Berlin, shoot Hitler, win the war, and then sail the Seven Seas._ That's what Nix had said, and it was what Dick still wanted. He missed having someone he could talk to without reservation.

He was spared having to think of a polite answer by Harry coming in and saying something in Strayer's ear. Strayer muttered a curse under his breath and stood abruptly.

"Do you need anything, sir?" Dick asked, trying to meet Harry's eyes, but Harry was dodging him, and Strayer just shook his head and rushed out after Harry. He abandoned half a cup of coffee and most of his not-eggs.

Dick watched him go, wondering what Harry had thought Strayer should hear that wasn't fit for Dick's ears, or for general company, but he stayed where he was. He was just the battalion XO again, and he should get used to that.

He had to make himself eat more, to put on the weight he'd lost in Belgium and get back into fighting shape. He should start running again too. After three days of rest and light duties, it was time to start training the men again. He didn't know when or where Ike would deploy the 101st next, and he couldn't assume that months on the line would equate to a rest. It certainly hadn't so far.

Dick spent the rest of breakfast outlining training rotas in his notebook, and working out how to lean hard on the replacements without grinding down the veterans more than need be. He would have to bring the company captains in; they had a better idea of their individual trooper's strengths and weaknesses.

By the time the mess was starting to clear, he had nearly forgotten about Harry's interruption and Strayer's abrupt departure.

* * *

By the time he got to his office, Dick wasn't quite humming, but he felt more relaxed than he had in weeks, if not months. He thought that he could do this: keep going forward, one day at a time, make himself eat and sleep and look after the men, just like he always had. They'd get through the war, somehow, and after that, well... it didn't really matter, did it? His service was what counted, and he thought now that he could still offer that.

He didn't think about Nix, or how much he missed seeing him every day, or how much he regretted not having anyone to talk to. That was for the best, in any case. Dick knew that he'd plastered over the cracks, and that introspection would only shake everything lose again. He wasn't going to let himself break down again like he had in the aid station, or after he killed Muldoon, and the best way to avoid that was to continue as if the last two weeks hadn't happened. As if he'd never known a friend like Lewis Nixon, and certainly hadn't had a lover. He'd once thought that if he could just keep those memories pure, untainted by what Muldoon was doing to him, that he could hold onto them, but he knew better now. It was far better to just go forward and forget the past. It didn't matter.

Luz was milling around in the office, like he'd run a message and then forgot he had anything else to do. Dick felt his body go on alert the second he saw him, and the image of Strayer and Harry hurrying off came back to him immediately. "Do you need something, Luz?"

Zielinski and Luz exchanged a look, which did not make Dick feel any better about what might be going on, then Luz said, "The boys were just wondering if anyone's found Capt. Nixon, sir."

"What?" Dick demanded, the sense of foreboding bursting into full-blown fear.

"Capt. Nixon never reported for duty this morning, sir" Zielinski cut in. "No one's seen him since your ceremony yesterday. He never checked his jeep back in."

Dick covered his mouth with his hand made himself focus on the practical side of the question, not the hundred horrified thoughts that were ricocheting around his mind like shell casings. "Who's looking for him?"

They looked at each other; Zielinski shrugged, and Luz said, "H Company I think. Second from Dog as of about half an hour ago. Regiment, uh... I guess it took them a while to realise he was gone, sir."

Nix showing up late, or not at all, wouldn't have been counted as odd for too damn long, especially not with how much he'd been drinking this past week. "For Pete's sake, Nix," Dick muttered in frustration. "Luz, find Lt. Welsh and bring him here. Zielinski, get me Speirs. We'd better start a general search."

He was overreacting. He knew he was overreacting. The chances were that Nix probably was sleeping it off under a hedge somewhere, or had found a mademoiselle who didn't pull a gun on him when he touched her hair. Or he'd been picked off by a sniper, or gotten drunk and fallen in the river, or...

He couldn't think about that. He wanted to go find Strayer and find out what they'd been doing about this—he wanted to grab a jeep and go look for Nix himself—but he knew that he had to stay in one place and wait for reports to come in. It was the thing he hated most about command.

Dick poured another cup of coffee and spread a map out on his desk, already plotting a search pattern, even though he didn't have enough—or any—data.

He traced the roads between 2nd Battalion and Regiment, and up and down the river, and tried to remember everything he'd heard on the last intelligence briefing about enemy positions. It was all rolling farming country, the kind that would be idyllic under its winter blanket of snow if it weren't for the thud of exploding shells down by the Moder River. It reminded Dick a little of Lancaster County, with it's expansive fields cut through with tree-lined creeks and country roads. It would be hellish to search, and it was too easy to remember stories of his youth: boys ignoring warnings and wandering out into the snow. The part where you wanted to just lie down and sleep, where a calm came over you at the end, had always scared the hell out of Dick. Even as a child, he'd dreaded the idea of the winter being able to take his will to live like that.

What had Nix being doing here at all? It seemed like that had been him leaning in the back then, behind the enlisted men, watching Strayer pin the oak leaves to Dick's collar. Two weeks ago it would surely have been Nix up there with him, making some joke about finally lapping him. Instead he'd left without a word—because he didn't think Dick would want him there? Because Dick had told him to stay away?—and no one had seen him since. 

It seemed like no matter what Dick did, he was never able to look after Nix. It was like that movie with the cursed monkey foot,that granted wishes, but each one went horribly awry, a cost of challenging God's will. Was this Dick's punishment, or Nix's? He wished he knew what he could do or say that would cut the tie between them, while at the same time knowing that even thinking of it was the purest hypocrisy. He could never let Nix go, not in his heart, not even if Nix really had walked into the snow and fallen into that final frozen sleep.

"Please no," he whispered and promised himself that if he found Nix alive, that he would try harder to be the perfect, detached soldier that he'd pledged his life to after Muldoon. That was hubris, too, because God no more bargained than he played dice, but Dick didn't know what else to do.

Harry came in before Luz found him, and Dick tried to read the seriousness of the situation from his expression before he spoke. It looked bad. "We found Nix. He's alive," Harry said, which was an opening statement so meant to soften what came next that Dick felt his gut twist despite the good news.

"Where is he? Is he hurt?"

Harry held up a hand. "Hold on, Dick. I'm just telling you. He's in the field hospital. Hypothermia. I don't know what else. H Company found his jeep under a bridge—that little creek between here and Haguenau. The road was icy as hell all around there."

It was too easy to picture: Nix upset—drunk?—losing control of his jeep and tumbling down the embankment into the little woods that surrounded the streams around here, a scream, a crash of crumpling metal, a splash, and then lying cold and alone, knowing no one would be looking for him. Dick felt ill. "Is he... will he be all right?"

"Wish I could tell you," Harry said. "I wanted to find out before I told you anything, but the docs, they don't know yet."

Dick's thoughts tracked back to that endless terrifying moment between when he'd seen Nix go down outside Nuenen and when Nix had said he was all right, and seemed to catch there. Fear froze him in place as it never had on the battlefield, and he didn't know what to do.

Luz pushed into his office without knocking, saying acerbically, "Hey, look. I found Lt. Welsh for you, sir."

Harry took Dick's elbow and turned him towards the door. "George, would you secure a jeep for the major here, and drive him down to the field hospital?"

"Harry, I..." Dick tried to protest, but Harry just ran right over him.

"Shut up and go, will you? Col. Strayer and I can hold down the fort." He leaned in to say in Dick's ear, "I don't know what problem you have with Nix, but you'll never forgive yourself if you stay here, and you know it."

Dick knew that he'd never forgive himself no matter what he did, but Harry was right. He shook his arm free and followed Luz to the motorpool. He was glad Luz was driving, and even more glad that he took one look at Dick's face and didn't say a word until they were half way to Haguenau.

"Looks like the spot," he said, and slowed the jeep as is they went over one of the narrow little bridges that had bottlenecked supply and troop movement all over France. The snow had been trampled muddy all the way down to the tree line, and Dick thought he saw a gap in the leafless brush. They were past and onto the bridge before he could see if the jeep was still there. The water below was dark and half frozen.

Luz whistled. "Capt. Nixon's lucky to be alive, sir."

"Yes," Dick said. He felt more cursed than lucky.

The field hospital in Haguenau was taken over from a set of doctor's offices, the city's actual hospital being on the German side of the river. It was small, and thankfully mostly empty. 

"Capt. Nixon?" Dick asked the regiment's surgeon before he'd finished saluting.

"I think he'll pull through, sir," Dr. Hilbert said. "We've got him warming up again, slowly, and I can't find any significant injuries. He's a lucky man."

"So I hear," Dick said. "Is he awake?"

Hilbert shrugged. "Comes and goes. Go through and see him if you like." He jerked his head at one of the examining rooms down a narrow hall.

Dick hesitated, torn now that he faced the actual sight of Nix. He was breaking the promises he'd made so recently: that if Nix survived, he would turn away, turn to the army and nothing else. But then he'd always been so utterly weak when it came to Nix. If he'd been able to resist temptation and keep his hands to himself in Paris, none of this would have happened. Nix would be safe and warm, and Dick would be able to sleep without drugging himself insensible, would be able to think of his own body without shame.

Maybe it was just too late for both of them.

"Thanks, Doc," Dick said and walked towards Nix's room.

It was small, just a cot a little side table and a straight-backed wooden chair, any other decorations, or even windows, Dick didn't notice. He stood in the door way, one hand still on the latch, and stared at the blanket-wrapped figure on the bed. 

Nix was swaddled in army blankets head to toe, with only his face exposed, and that face was white as death against the olive drab wool. His lips were blue, and if he was breathing, Dick couldn't tell for all the shivering. His whole body shook as it tried to warm itself again, but Nix didn't seem to be aware. The room was quite warm, a small stove in the corner bringing up the temperature, and Dick stepped in and closed the door behind him.

He sat in the chair and reached for Nix, but his hands were wrapped in the blankets, and Dick didn't presume to touch Nix's face. It was too much like the mutilated corpse of Fitzpatrick in the aid station. Maybe seeing Nix there had been a foreshadowing after all.

Dick sat in numb silence, watching Nix's face, the part in his lips and the translucent curve of his closed eyelids. Despite the way his teeth chattered and his eyes flickered, he had more stillness in him now that Dick had seen in him in months, even in sleep, and the thought of those boys lost in the snow came back to him again. Was that what Nix had wanted?

Surely not. If Nix wanted to end his life, he could do so more quickly and efficiently, and would have managed to actually do it. He was not a man to linger.

"What am I going to do with you?" Dick asked softly. He thought he saw Nix's eyelashes flutter at his words, but he didn't respond.

Dick settled in for a long vigil. He wouldn't be able to return until he saw Nix awake, even if he had to steal a play from Nixon himself, and leave before Nix knew Dick had been there at all.

* * *

After about ten minutes of sitting listening to Nix's teeth chatter over his too-faint breathing, a nurse came in and started to peel away the layers of blankets. Dick pushed his chair away to give her room, trying not too look too obviously at the white skin revealed as she moved to replace cooled water bottles with fresh ones and wrap new heated blankets. Nix stirred under her touch, but didn't speak or open his eyes.

"Your Capt. Nixon is a lucky man, sir," the nurse commented, and when Dick couldn't think of anything to say, she continued. "He was pinned into the jeep here,"—a slashing gesture across the tops of his thighs—"but not hard enough to break anything, and the jeep only went part way into the water."

Dick swallowed, feeling nauseous. "Was he, uh, conscious for all of that."

"Probably," she said, and then seemed to realise that that wasn't what Dick wanted to hear, and added, "He was asleep when we found him, from the cold."

"Of course," Dick said. He tried not to imagine what it would have felt like to lie pinned for hours, knowing that you would slowly freeze, and that no one would hear you crying for help. Had he fought the creeping cold and the end that he knew must follow? Or had he welcomed it?

"He's a tough cookie," the nurse continued, shaking out a thermometer and sticking it in Nix's mouth. He tried to spit it out, but she didn't budge. "His temperature's coming up nicely, another few hours, and he'll be trying to bust out of here, just like the rest of the regiment."

"When will he wake up?" Dick asked.

Another shrug. "Any time now. I'm surprised he hasn't already." She made an approving cluck at the reading on the thermometer, and noted it down. "You're his buddy, aren't you, Major? I've heard sometimes it's nice to hear a familiar voice, when you're drifting in and out."

"I..." Dick hesitated wondering how welcome his voice could be by now. "I think he'd rather hear your voice, Corporal."

She smiled at him, genuine warmth behind her chocolate-brown eyes, but said, "I'm sure I can't afford to sit around all day and talk to boys, no matter how pretty they are. I'm not an officer."

Dick smiled back and let her finish wrapping Nix up again. Knowing that he had the new warmth of the water bottles against him made Dick feel better, almost as though he'd done something himself. As if he could forget that Nix had spent hours cold and alone, slowly slipping into death's grasp, and Dick hadn't even known he was missing, let alone done anything to save him.

When the nurse had left, and the door clicked behind her, Dick cautiously laid his hand on Nix's blanket-wrapped shoulder and asked, "Oh, Lew, what am I going to do with you?" He didn't expect a response, but Nix's eyelids fluttered, and his lips parted in a moan. "Nix? Can you hear me?"

Nix didn't respond, and Dick leaned in, sliding his fingers into a gap in the blankets to touch Nix's neck. The skin still felt too cold, and Dick shivered in sympathy. He wished he could crawl into the cot next to Nix and wrap his arms around him until their bodies warmed each other. They'd done that in Bastogne on the coldest nights. Nix would come in from walking the line, and Dick would uncurl from around the bubble of warmth he'd been hoarding and pull Nix into his embrace, holding him tight until they both stopped shivering.

Moving as if in a dream, Dick leaned forward and kissed Nix's forehead, then hovered for a moment over his lips, but didn't dare kiss him. Instead he took a long breath, drawing in Nix's shallow exhalation, and then pulled away.

"Dick?" Nix murmured, lips hardly moving, eyes still closed.

"I'm here, Nix," Dick squeezed his shoulder, and when that drew no reaction, traced Nix's cheekbone with the backs of his knuckles. "You're all right. We found you, and you're all right. Just a little cold."

Nix's mouth twitched, the tiniest smile, which no one who wasn't avidly watching his face would have even seen. "Little," he said. "Warm me up?"

Dick stopped, drawing his hands away. How had Nix known to ask for what Dick both wanted most and most could not offer? "I can't," he said. "We're in the field hospital, Nix. The docs are taking care of you."

"Oh." Nix was quiet for so long after that that Dick thought he'd fallen asleep again, maybe even the true sleep that he so badly needed, but then he cracked an eye and squinted at Dick. "You don't want me," he said. He sounded more lucid than he had before, but a certain vagueness still clung to his voice that made Dick think that Nix wasn't completely aware yet.

Dick didn't know how to answer Nix, drunk of sober. "It's not that," he said. The opposite, in fact: he wanted Nix far too much, and if he let himself give into that want, some day soon what he wanted and what he couldn't have were going to pull him apart between them.

Nix turned his face toward Dick, eyes just barely open, expression hard to read. "Still love you," he said.

Dick's breath caught. They'd never said that. It had been built into Dick's every action towards Nix for years, into every kiss since Paris, but they'd never said it. It had somehow felt too dangerous, like some kind of jinx. Now Nix had risked everything to say it, and he'd said it too late. "No you don't," Dick told him. "You love who I was before. I can't be him again, Nix. I'll only hurt you if I try. I almost shot you, for crying out loud."

"I don't care," Nix insisted, anger beginning to replace the fuzzy vulnerability in his voice. Nix had always been so much better at being angry, now he was shivering, and blanket wrapped, and a picture of fury. "I don't. I'd risk it. I'd wait for peace. I'd do whatever you wanted. But if you don't want me, there's nothing I can do to change that. You won't let me fight."

They could end it here, end it forever. All Dick had to do was say that he was sorry, that Nix was right, and he didn't feel about Nix the way he had before he'd let Muldoon rip into him. He could lie, and say that he didn't want Nix any more. Nix felt so wrapped up in guilt about his imagined part in what Dick had done that he would force himself to let it be.

Dick blinked as the realisation of how he was willing to use Nix's tangled emotions to protect himself sank in. He'd been telling himself before that he wouldn't ask for anything because he didn't want Nix to only be with him out of misplaced obligation. That wasn't what Nix was saying now. Half conscious and half dead, he was telling Dick that the only reason he was staying away was because couldn't stand to ask for anything Dick wasn't willing to give him freely. Nix was making promise after promise, and hoping that somewhere in there he'd stumble onto an offering Dick would find acceptable. As if offering himself wasn't or couldn't be enough—as if Nix himself couldn't be enough.

The idea that he was making Nix feel as chewed up and worthless as Dick had felt with Muldoon, sent a stab of pain from the pit of his stomach straight up to close around his heart.

Reading the pain in Dick's expression, Nix closed his eyes and turned his face away. "I'm sorry," Nix said, almost too soft to hear. "I didn't mean to do this to you. I'm still a little loopy. Just... just pretend I didn't say anything."

Dick knew he had to stop this, but he didn't know how. His hand shot out a covered Nix's forehead. Nix pressed up against it. "No, Nix. No. It's..." It was what? He didn't know. It was Dick being so broken and afraid that he couldn't even see any way to move besides quite literally soldering forward, and doing it alone. He was such a coward, and he didn't know how not to be one any more. Now, when Nix needed him to say something that would throw a bridge over the widening gap between them, Dick felt his throat choking closed. This would be the end of the best and truest love he'd ever known, the final disastrous action in the chain that had started with him falling for Muldoon's blackmail.

 _I hate that he won,_ Nix had said. Dick hated it too. He was so tired of losing. What had happened to the soldier who'd silenced the guns at Brécourt, who'd been bold enough to kiss his best friend in Paris?

Nix was waiting for an answer, shaking and silent under Dick's touch, as if he were afraid that any word or sound would frighten Dick away.

Dick had to say something before he choked, and the indecision built in him until he felt as much as heard Muldoon asking, _I thought I'd give you a choice; would you like that, son?_ That night, he's chosen to protect Nix—even if only in memory—a the cost of his own body and soul. He felt anger rise at the memory of the sickening options Muldoon had given him, a choice that damned him either way, and it flowed over into anger at himself, and the helplessness and impotence he felt now.

It was the same choice now as it had been then: protect Nix and take the hit, or curl in to protect himself and accept the shame of surrender. If he could make it then, he could make it now.

"Nix," he said, and waited until Nix opened his eyes again, then looked him in the eye said as clearly and sincerely as his heart would let him, "I still want you. I want you so bad it scares the hell out of me."

Nix blinked hard, then twisted under Dick's hand until he could kiss the palm. Dick curled his fingers and cupped the side of his cheek. He wanted to lean in and kiss Nix properly, but it was too dangerous. That nurse could be back at any moment.

"It scares the hell out of me too," Nix said. "Worse than my first jump, but I guess we did that together, too."

They'd done everything together in those days, and more since. "I'll try," Dick said.

Nix smiled, lips still ghastly blue against his pale skin. His teeth still chattered, but maybe a little less now? "Your best has always been more than enough for me," he said.

Dick had to swallow hard as tears closed his throat, but the reference to that awful conversation in the ruined cafe reminded him of the question he'd almost been afraid to consider until now. "Nix, did you drive off the road on purpose?"

The question made Nix blink in such genuine surprise that he didn't need to answer, but he did anyway. "Accident. Ice. Wasn't even drinking, much." Dick stroked his cheek with his thumb again, and Nix leaned into it. "I promised."

"Yeah, you did."

Dick heard footsteps outside the door and withdrew his hand, but even with the physical connection gone, Dick felt as though something between them had been reforged.


	9. Chapter 9

The next morning, Gen. Taylor announced that the entire 101st Airborne would be rotating back to Mourmelon-le-Grand for rest and recouperation. Dick and Strayer spent the next ten hours loading 2nd Battalion and its equipment onto trains. Strayer left with the first cars, but Dick didn't embark until he was sure that they hadn't somehow left anyone or anything behind in Alsace.

He hadn't had time to check in on Nix past word of mouth since Dr. Hilbert had kicked him out the afternoon before, and now he had the unsettling feeling of not knowing where he was. The memory of the previous day's search still hung in his mind, and he didn't like not being able to picture Nix's exact location. He was probably in the medical section with the wounded, Dick told himself; Hilbert hadn't released Nix last Dick had heard.

If that were the case, he would already be half way to Nancy, and Dick could catch up with him in a few days. Having a little time apart would be good for both of them, he thought. It would at least give Dick time to figure out how the hell he was going to keep the promise he'd plunged into.

He took one last look along the platform, but there was only a few men from the logistics section who were trying to square away the 101st's replacements, and no familiar Screaming Eagle patches. Dick stepped up onto the train, and made his way back to where Zielinski had said his compartment was. He was supposed to have the room to himself, but when he got there, he saw a set of bunk beds and another footlocker next to his.

"Going my way?" Nix asked, leaning down from the top bunk. Dick thought he still looked a little pale, but he had pink in his cheeks and he wasn't shivering, at least not as much as Dick could see under the heavy jacket and blanket Nix had buried himself in.

Dick nodded in satisfaction and said, "Looks like." To hell with having time to figure out what he was going to do. He couldn't deny the immense relief the sight of Nix brought, and now that he's felt it, he wouldn't give it up. "Aren't you supposed to be in the hospital, Lew?"

Nix grinned. "Breaking out of the aid station, an Easy Company tradition."

Lord, but that smile still made Dick weak in the knees. "You haven't been in E Company for a year a and a half."

"And yet, at heart," Nix said. He swung his legs over the edge of the bunk and dropped to the floor, landing just as the train lurched into motion. Dick stepped forward and caught his shoulders, steadying him, and Nix's hands closed on his elbows. "Whoops," Nix said, and laughed. There was whiskey on his breath, and Dick wanted to kiss him.

They stood there for a moment, chest to chest, rocking with the train until Dick reached his foot back and kicked the compartment door shut. Then he dropped his head until his forehead rested on Nix's shoulder and let himself bask in the warmth and relief that having this back let him feel. He hated how selfish he was to need this from Nix, but it seemed that Nix needed it right back. They'd never be unbound from each other, no matter what he did, and Dick was tired of trying.

"You all right?" Nix asked. He ran his hand up Dick's spine and squeezed the back of his neck. Dick tensed for a moment, but Nix didn't try to touch his hair this time.

"No," Dick answered, voice muffled against Nix's blanket.

"Anything I can do?"

"Don't ever let go." It was impossible, but Dick asked for it anyway.

Nix laughed and kissed the side of his neck, just below his ear. "Never ever," he whispered, and Dick's fingers dug into his shoulders, like a cat who'd just had his ears scratched. "Christ, Dick," Nix started to say, but Dick shook his head.

"I don't want to hear you say you're sorry again," he said. Nix wasn't the one who'd done anything wrong, and Dick was tired of trying to see how to forgive him for a situation Dick had created. It didn't matter now anyway. They were together, and for the next month—he hoped—they'd be safe behind the lines.

Nix let it drop, squeezing the back of Dick's neck before guiding him to the bench along the side of the compartment. They sat hip to hip, and Nix flipped part of his blanket around Dick's shoulders.

"How do you feel?" Dick asked. Nix seemed warm enough, at least.

"Awful," Nix said, but his voice was light, and it sounded more like whining than an actual complaint. He slumped over dramatically, resting his head on Dick's shoulder and spreading his hand across Dick's chest, like an actress in a silent film swooning into her lover's arms.

"Poor thing." Dick leaned to kiss Nix's forehead, and again revelled in the joy of that. Everything felt so light and effortless when Nix was around, as though he'd taken off a rucksack with all his gear at the end of a night march. He could almost forget that they hadn't addressed the difficult part—the part where everything had changed—almost, save for it hung heavy in the air like red smoke. "I've been taking pills to sleep," he said. That seemed like the easiest place to start. "Harry got them from Doc Roe."

Nix lifted his head to look at him. "Do they help?"

"Well, I'm sleeping," Dick said, then took the next small step. "I still have the dreams though." He'd dreamed the night before that he was back on the table with his legs spread wide. Muldoon had been thrusting into him, but Dick had felt oddly detached from it, and from himself, as though he were looking down on his own body. Then Muldoon had pulled out of him, and Dick had looked up and realised that Lew had been watching the whole time, that Lew had his pants open and his cock out and was stepping into take Muldoon's place. Dick had wished he could wake up then, but he hadn't. He'd stayed with the dream until Lew finished fucking him. His easy, contented expression had matched Muldoon's. As Lew had come, Dick realised he had a .45 in his hand. He'd levelled it, and shot Nix in the chest, waking at the spray of blood.

"Bad?" Nix asked, and Dick realised that he'd been wool gathering again.

"What do you think?" He immediately regretted his harsh tone and the hurt look it has caused. "Sorry."

Nix shook his head. "Stupid question."

"I think they're getting worse," Dick admitted, another step.

"Do you want to talk about them?"

"Nope," Dick said. That was too far all at once, and too tied in with all the things he's promised never to tell a soul, Nix most of all. How could he describe the endless variations on war, horror, and those four nights trapped with Muldoon?

"Okay," Nix said, and squeezed his shoulder, pulling Dick tight against him. The blanket made them too warm, but Dick wouldn't have moved for the world.

They listened to the steady chug of the train and the click of the tracks under them. Dick stared through the gap in the curtains behind the lower bunk at the snowy countryside passing by. It was getting dark already, and they wouldn't be in Mourmelon until the next afternoon, even without stoppages. He would have to go see about the mess schedule soon, but for now he didn't want to move.

"I don't mind," Nix said, but Dick had to track back to think what they'd been talking about.

"The dreams?" he asked. Or that he wouldn't tell Nix about them?

"If you don't want to... to... you know, with me, again," Nix's cheeks coloured, but he pressed on. "It would be all right."

That was less a step than a flying leap into an inferno. Dick didn't know how to answer that, save to say, "I'd mind." He leaned his cheek against Nix's hair. "You were right. It would mean he's won." And it wouldn't be fair to Nix, no matter what he said, for Dick to ask him to be a monk. "But it... uh, might take a while."

"We'll go slow," Nix promised. "We've got time."

* * *

Harry crashed in on them after chow, thankfully not commenting on Dick and Nix's reconciliation, but definitely showing an interest in the remaining bottle and a half of whiskey in Dick's footlocker, plus the bottle of brandy he'd picked up somewhere along the line.

Dick let them have the bench and stretched out on lower bunk with the curtain half closed, listening to them retread old battles and drifting in and out of a light doze. He liked hearing their voices—relieved to be on the way to safety and happy to be together again—but didn't have anything to add himself that night. It felt like waking a little early on a school day and hearing his mother making breakfast, her husky voice a contralto to his father's tenor, and knowing that he had five or ten minutes to just lie under the blankets and feel warm, a moment to be grateful and reflect before starting a new day.

He threw an arm over his eyes to cut the light, and wondered if maybe tonight he would be able to sleep on his own, without the help of Roe's pills. He'd used to be able to drop fast asleep and stay out for as long as he needed to. It was a good soldier's trait, and if the 101st was to be part of the invasion of Germany, he'd need to relearn it. Maybe tomorrow. Tonight, sleeping right below Nix, he didn't want to risk waking up with a screaming nightmare.

Dick was more than half asleep by the time Nix kicked Harry out, pleading his hospital escape and fatigue. He didn't quite pay attention to the click of the latch and the scrape of a footlocker against wood, but snapped awake when the bed shifted.

"Shhhh," Nix soothed, and bent down until their foreheads touched. "Just thinking how much I'd like a goodnight kiss."

Dick parted his lips and waited, but Nix didn't move. Was he waiting for Dick to say that would be all right? Was Dick going to have to do that for everything from now on? "Any day now," he said, irritated, afraid that Nix would spend the rest of their lives treating Dick like Mrs. Barnes' bone china, afraid that Dick would spend the rest of their lives feeling like he should.

Then Nix's lips were on his, and he forgot anything about being annoyed with him. The touch was as tentative as Dick's first kiss had been, meeting first the corner of Dick's mouth and then tilting to match their lips full on. There was nothing demanding in that kiss, just the offer of whatever Dick wanted it to be. Nix's hands were still braced on the bed, not touching Dick as they always had before. Dick sighed and touched Nix's lower lip with his tongue, but opening his mouth didn't make Nix any less cautious. Dick lifted his head to force them closer, but Nix just pulled away so that only their lips brushed, and the familiarity of that sensation sent a shiver through Dick. Nothing about what Nix was doing should have any resemblance to those forced kisses on his last night with Muldoon, but once his mind caught hold of the idea, he couldn't quite shake it.

"Better not get carried away," Dick murmured, and Nix looked disappointed, but pulled away. Dick sat up and pulled Nix into a sideways hug, hoping that his abruptness hadn't put him off. "We need to be more careful," he added.

"Right, sorry." Nix stood and pushed Dick locker back against the wall. Then he stripped down to his shorts and undershirt, stretching luxuriously. Dick watched the way his shirt rode up, exposing a pale sliver of stomach and made himself not reach out. He wanted to pin Nix down and run his hands over every inch of his skin until he wasn't afraid of anything any more, but now wasn't the time. He didn't know when the time might be.

He waited until Nix had climbed into his bunk and then rose and stripped as well. He hesitated over the box of pills, then swallowed one with a swig from his canteen. When he returned to bed, Dick pulled the blankets up to his chin, finding the scratchy army wool comforting in its familiarity.

The bunk above him shifted as Nix rolled over, and Dick knew that neither of them would sleep quite yet. He didn't want his thoughts to linger on the echo of Muldoon's kiss, so he asked, "Looking forward to Mourmelon?"

Nix chuckled. "Yeah. Being Regimental S3 in quarters is going to be even more boring than Battalion S2." He sighed. "Tell you what. The second we get off this train, I'm going to start on Col. Sink about giving us a couple passes. You. Me. Paris. Forty-eight hours. Just like old times"

"Sure," Dick said. He wanted the time away from his duties—time and room to think—but it felt too soon. Too soon especially to be alone with Nix. He thought about the last pass he'd had, and how the memories of it had carried him through the worst the war had thrown at them. What if they got there, and Nix expected that return to fix everything, make it like the last two months hadn't happened? What if Dick broke down again, returned to that childish weeping? It would ruin everything, even his memories. He could feel the sleeping pill tugging him down, and he didn't want to leave another argument between them, but he didn't know how to tell Nix not to get his hopes up.

"What?" Nix asked, then when Dick didn't answer, muttered, "Stupid. I'm an idiot. We'll go later, when you've had more time."

And there was the alternative, that Dick hovered in indecision while Nix treated him like something breakable, and they never came back to what they were because Dick was too much of a coward. He could have promised Nix that he'd try, only to hand him failure after failure. "No," he said. "I'd like that. We should go. But..."—he licked his lips—"but not Paris. Amiens or something."

"Sure," Nix said, relief clear in his voice. "Amiens is perfect."

"Thanks, Nix," Dick murmured as the drugs pulled him under. He hoped Nix knew that it covered everything he'd ever done, not just the passes, but if Nix answered, Dick didn't hear.

* * *

Dick didn't know what Nix said to Sink, but he showed up with a 48-hour pass for each of them not three days after their train pulled into Mourmelon-le-Grand. Strayer had gone back to his old habit of spending most of his time at Regiment, leaving Dick with the day to day of 2nd Battalion, which had lately largely included the sort of picky bureaucratic details that Dick hated. The whole camp was a sea of mud, and the men were rapidly transitioning from being relieved at being off the line to complaining bitterly about living conditions and the weather.

Dick had his ruck packed and they were on a train not twenty minutes after that. They were both in uniform, of course, but Dick felt lighter already. Two days of not having to deal with ordering people to dig out flooded latrines and squaring the ammunition allotment they were supposed to have with their actual ammunition inventory. Two days alone with Nix. That was the part that scared the hell out of him.

They didn't have any privacy on the train, and Nix dozed beside him while Dick stared out the window. He'd never thought, growing up, that he'd see this much of the world, never especially thought about leaving Pennsylvania, and now he didn't know if he'd ever go home. Thinking about the year ahead still didn't come easily to Dick, and thinking about the coming evening was even worse. He wanted so badly to be able to offer Nix everything he'd been before, but he couldn't forget that moment by the Moder River where he'd held a gun on his best friend. Nix had been right: it was too soon. He was pushing too hard, and he was going screw up and prove to Nix that he wasn't worth the effort any more. Worse, he was going to lash out and hurt Nix again. He should have said something sooner, made some excuse to delay this, but it was too late now.

By the time they disembarked in Amiens, Dick was strung so tight that a touch would have snapped him, and Nix was casting him concerned sideways looks when he thought Dick wasn't watching. They didn't help.

Nix had gotten a line on a hotel in a quiet part of town, not the usual Red Cross billets that would be crawling with soldiers on liberty. It was about a twenty minute walk from the station, and Dick felt the dread rising in him with every step. He felt like he wasn't getting enough air, and if he didn't find some way to calm himself down, he was going to throw up on Nix's gleaming jump boots.

Somehow Dick checked in and let Nix herd him up to a third floor room. It had two single beds, but of course it did, that would have had to have been what Nix asked for with two men together. It didn't mean that he didn't expect...

Nix dumped his ruck on the floor with a thud and slammed the door behind him a little to hard. "I'm not a monster," he snapped.

Dick blanched. "What?"

"I'm not some kind of sex fiend." Nix paced across the room and yanked the curtains shut. "I not taking you to a hotel room so that I can have my wicked way with you, will ye or nil ye. This isn't a Valentino movie; no one's going to be ravished. You don't need to be fucking afraid of me, Dick."

"Lew, no..." Dick felt like a tire that hat a spike. Suddenly he didn't have the strength to stand, his knees gave, and he slid down the wall to sit on the floor, one hand still clutching the strap of his ruck. "I'm not afraid of you, Nix," he said, even though that wasn't quite true. "I'm afraid of me."

Nix sighed and slumped onto the nearest bed. "Stupid," he said again, and Dick hated the self-loathing in his voice. "I should have waited, no matter what you said." He glanced up at Dick. "Well, we're waiting now."

"I'm sorry," Dick said. He felt like dropping his head to his knees, but it reminded him too much of Nix's collapse in the burned out cafe. "I want to..." he stopped, unsure what he wanted most. Did he want to forget the past two weeks had ever happened? To have sex again? To be forgiven for murder? "I want to feel like I did before," he concluded, even through the truth in that couldn't cover every tangled, contradictory thing he felt all at the same moment.

"But you don't," Nix said. He didn't sound angry, even at himself, just tired.

"No. I don't."

The words hung starkly between them, and Nix sighed again and tugged at his tie, loosening it and undoing his top shirt button. "Come here," he said. "Looking at you sitting on the floor is driving me nuts. I promise not to get handsy."

Dick let go of his ruck and rose, steadying himself against the wall. He felt immensely tired, even though he was still taking the pills and had been sleeping solidly every night. He sat right next to Nix, close enough that their knees touched. This was okay. They'd done this on the train. "All right," he said. He unknotted his tie and let it hang around his neck and undid his jacket. It felt better, sitting her next to Nix, just like he always had.

He seemed to have come to the end of Nix's ideas, because they sat quietly for a while, neither knowing what to do next. Dick had been on freshmen dates with girls whose brothers he had a crush on that had felt less awkward.

Finally Nix pinched the bridge of his nose, took a long swig from his flask and said, "What else can't I touch? Besides your hair."

Dick took a sharp breath, set back by the directness of the question. Maybe that was best, just talk about it and get it over with before they both died of embarrassment, only he didn't know how to describe what not to do without telling Nix what he'd done with Muldoon, and he couldn't face that. He shook his head, saying nothing.

"Dammit," Nix muttered. "Never mind. I'm too tired to figure this out. Let's just... let's lie down for a while, like the other night."

The night when Dick had curled up in Nix's arms and soaked his undershirt with snot and tears. He was mortally afraid that he would do that again, only this time he wouldn't be able to stop. He was afraid of being afraid, too. "Sure," he said, after what he knew was too long a pause. "Okay, sure." Dick stood and started to undress, and Nix busied himself with his own buttons, so that he wasn't watching Dick. Did he know that Muldoon had made him strip? Or were they both working on instinct, one as much as the other?

When they were both down to their briefs and undershirts, Nix pulled back the blankets and lay on his back at the far edge of the bed. Dick caught a flash of dark bruises across the tops of his thighs from where the jeep had pinned him, and pulled his eyes away to focus on how he was going to fit in the bed. If Dick stretched on his side and threw his leg over Nix's hips, there'd just about be room for both of them. Nix stretched his arm out, and Dick put his head on Nix's shoulder and curled into the warmth. His hand rested on Nix's biceps, and he stroked the soft skin with his thumb. A shaft of late afternoon light pieced the curtains, streaking the wall next to the door amber and pink, but the room itself was dim and quiet. Dick focused on the thud of Nix's heart under his ear and the even rise and fall of his chest. He tried to match their breathing, which was when he realised that his own heart was pounding.

"I'm not afraid of you," he said again, and Nix squeezed his shoulder. "I don't think you're him. Sometimes, I just... forget where I am. I don't know how to not do that."

Nix lifted his head to kiss Dick's forehead, but missed the angle and got the bridge of his nose instead. "If we can't again, I mean ever again," he said, "I could live with that. Believe it or not, I'm not in it for the sex." He'd said that on the train to Mourmelon too, and Dick knew he meant it well, meant it to take the pressure of expectation off of Dick, but it set his teeth on edge.

"Well, maybe I am," he said, voice a little waspish.

His head bounced as Nix chuckled. "There's a side of Dick Winters I didn't expect."

"I'm no saint," Dick answered. Now less than ever.

"You did make the first move," Nix agreed. "And the second, and the third."

Dick remembered what it had felt like to be that voraciously full of desire, for his body to fill with lust until his blood sang, and then let go and let his need pull him forward into a new joyful world. He wondered if he'd ever allow himself to be that incautious again. It had felt like running headlong into battle, fear and adrenaline and pride in his own strength all mixed together, a shot fired from a rifle. But that had been before, when he was still brave. He sighed and rubbed his cheek against Nix's undershirt, and wished Nix would stroke his hair. He'd used to like that.

Nix's breath was hot and booze laden on his forehead, mixing with the scent of sweat, damp cotton and army soap. The heat of their bodies under the heavy quilts were already making Dick drowsy. He could feel his heart slowing, and he closed his eyes. It felt good just to be held, to let Nix touch him, and to know that he wouldn't be hurt. Even before Muldoon, he'd often felt a lonely ache in his heart that only hearing Nix's voice or seeing the flash of his teeth as he laughed seemed to ease. He'd spent so long yearning for more; for years he'd taken any scrap of attention Nix had tossed his way, gathering casual friendly touches or a hand up during training and hoarding them close to his heart. Before Paris, he'd only dreamed of lying together like this, and he knew he should be grateful for getting to have it again now. He should be grateful that Nix was willing to talk to him at all, let alone hold him close.

"I love you," Dick said, half asleep, but not meaning the words any less.

Below his ear, he heard Nix's heartbeat pick up, and he took a sharp breath, but his fingers dug possessively into Dick's shoulder and he said, "Yeah. I love you too. Now go to sleep."

So Dick did.

* * *

He woke late and starving, with Nix's clavicle digging into his ear. He shifted to look up, and saw that Nix was awake and watching him, an odd, fixed expression on his face. Dick realised why when he moved his leg and bumped into Nix's hard cock.

"Sorry," Nix muttered, face heating. "It just..." he shook his head. "I was having a good dream."

Dick realised that he hadn't dreamed at all, or didn't remember if he did. "About me, huh?" he asked.

"Yeah." Nix tried to wriggle out from under him, but Dick grabbed a fistful of his undershirt and held on. "You get up. It'll go down in a minute. I've been trying to think about how cold the fucking Bois Jacques was."

"No, wait," Dick said. He didn't think he could feel more at ease than he did at that moment. "Let me give you a hand?"

Nix went completely still under him, not even breathing. "Really?"

"Yeah," Dick said, and before he could change his mind, he let go of Nix's shirt and slid his hand down over Nix's chest, then his stomach, then under the hem of his briefs. He didn't move his head. He liked hearing Nix's heart pick up as he sucked in a breath when Dick's fingertips brushed his cock. He stroked it lightly hand barely closed around it, and listened to Nix's throaty moan vibrate through his chest.

"Jesus," Nix breathed, and then when Dick squeezed a little tighter, "Oh, Jesus, please." His thighs flexed and the bed creaked a little under them. His body was warm under Dick's, and his fingers kneaded Dick's shoulder.

Dick closed his eyes—he could close them if he liked now—and stroked his thumb over the tip of Nix's cock. He liked how his touch made Nix gasp and moan under him, liked that it was him doing that, and that he could stop if he wanted. That was a dangerous thought, and he dismissed it, focusing on sliding the hood of Nix's cock back, and then smiling against Nix's shirt when that made him nearly sob.

"Dick, please," Nix said again, voice loaded with emotion and desire. "Goddam it, hurry up."

"Pushy," Dick murmured, but he wrapped his hand around the base of Nix's cock and slid it up, swift and smooth, and then did it again, and again. Nix was writhing and thrusting into his hand, but Dick controlled the pace until Nix was gasping in a breath with every squeeze of Dick's hand and perspiration soaked through his shirt. He'd always been so sensual, so openly needy under Dick's touch.

Nix's whole body was shaking now, and Dick drew his hand up one last time, pressing his thumb just under the head. Nix stiffened and came, groaning and pressing a sudden flurry of kisses to Dick's temple. "Jesus, that was good," he sighed and kissed Dick nose, then his lips when Dick lifted his head enough. His kiss was sloppy and off centre, but Dick loved it anyway. He let his head drop again and listened to Nix's heartbeat begin to slow. Nix cleared his throat and asked, "What about you?"

Dick realised that he was half hard and rubbing against Nix's hip. He hadn't even been aware that he was doing it. He stilled, considering. "Can I just...?"

"Whatever you want," Nix answered.

"Okay." Dick slipped his hand into his own briefs and touched himself. His fingers were slick with Nix's come and slid easily over his cock. He stroked slowly at first, easing into the first pleasure he'd felt in weeks. He didn't want to rush through the giddy warmth he felt right now. Who knew when he'd feel it again.

He ran the ball of his thumb along the edge of hood, and flexed his fingers, scraping his callouses along the underside of his shaft. He rubbed his hips against Nix and buried his face in his shirt. He hadn't felt good like this in such a long time. He breathed in the scent of Nix's shirt and pulled the skin of his cock up and down over it, squeezing a little as his hips moved. Nix was lying very still under him, too still, like he didn't dare move, but Dick would worry about that later. He ran his thumb over the head of his cock and bit his lip to hide the whimper growing in his throat. His breath came short and shallow, faster with each stroke. He didn't want to come so soon, but he couldn't seem to hold himself back. His skin flushed and the bed was too warm, but it all built on the closeness he felt with Nix, and how much he wanted to let go and just feel.

Dick came with a muffled cry, eyes screwed shut, face still pressed against Nix's chest.

"Easy," Nix said, and, "There you go. Jesus, I've missed this. I missed seeing you happy." He kissed the top of Dick's head, keeping his lips pressed there instead of pulling away.

It had been so rare—two nights in Paris, a laughing escape from a bell tower, an evening listening to his best friends share whiskey and stories, a quiet hour in the English countryside—moments of joy stolen in the middle of the bloodiest war in history. Another one, now.

"Come on," Nix said, kicking the blankets off. "Let's go find some dinner."

Dick wiped his hand on his briefs before rolling to his feet. "It's late," he said.

"The French eat late. It's the best thing about this country."

"If you say so."

Nix had gotten them a room with an en-suite bath, instead of a shared WC down the hall, which Dick had thought was a little extravagant until he wanted to clean up without getting dressed again. It even had a bathtub.

He stripped and rinsed his briefs and undershirt before taking a quick French wash and straightening his hair. He felt as though he were preparing for a date, like his appearance mattered more tonight than it had in years. Though it was the kind of date where his beau was waiting in the other room, and they'd already seen each other naked a hundred times.

Dick went to dig fresh under things out of his ruck, humming some tune Luz had been singing the other day. He stood and turned back to see where he'd put his uniform, bundle of clothes in one hand, and froze in place.

Nix was staring at him wide eyed and white faced, like he'd looked at Dick when he'd found him in shock and covered in Muldoon's blood.

"What's wrong?" Dick asked, trying to imagine what could have happened in the five minutes he'd been in the other room.

"You, uh..." Nix rubbed his hand across his mouth then finished, voice a little squeaky, "You have bruises all over your ass."

"Oh." For a second Dick didn't know what he meant, then the realisation hit, and he felt the blood rush to his face. A deep knot of shame tightened in his gut, and suddenly he wasn't hungry any more. He pulled his briefs and undershirt on and circled to the dresser he'd folded his uniform onto without meeting Nix's eyes. "Sorry," he muttered. "I forgot." He hadn't realised they bruises from Muldoon's switch would last that long, he hadn't felt them in almost a week, but his pale skin held marks. He knew that. He should have thought of it. He'd make sure not to let Nix see him naked until he was sure all of Muldoon's marks were gone, maybe on Judgement Day. 

"I..." Nix started, and then broke off, clearly too angry to speak. "Goddammit," he muttered finally, and grabbed his uniform and stalked into the bath. The door closed behind him with a solid click.

Dick finished dressing, then stood not quite knowing what to do. It felt like every time he made the least advance, the world would throw a counteraction right in his teeth.

 _I'd have liked to have branded you_ , Muldoon had said. He might as well have. He'd covered Dick in the marks of his possession, and now Nix had seen. Dick wished he could scrub himself from head to toe, as he had in the showers, but he knew by now that wouldn't make a difference. The marks were inside as well as out, and he would never get them off. Instead, the best he could hope for was that Nix would still want to go out, and that they could somehow pretend that Nix hadn't seen.

Nix emerged a minute or so later, fully dressed, and from the look on his face, Dick didn't think that hope would last long. He'd also clearly finished his flask, and his cheeks were flushed with alcohol as well as fury.

Dick sighed, and decided to go on the offensive. "Can we go, Lewis?" he asked.

"Yeah," Nix replied. "Yeah, why not. I need a drink."

"All right." Dick led the way, knowing that Nix was staring at his ass all the way down to the street, face burning.

Once on the street, they fell into step beside each other, Dick letting Nix call the turns. He seemed to have word on a restaurant in a part of town that the RAF hadn't hit the summer before, and Dick didn't have an opinion on where to eat at the best of times. Food was food, and if it wasn't K Rations, he wasn't that picky.

They didn't say anything until Nix found them a hole-in-the-wall spot that was packed with soldiers even at nine at night. Nix said something in French to the maître d', and they found themselves at a little table in the very back, set little apart from the crowd. Dick had the impression the money changed hands, but he didn't see it.

There were no menus, but two glasses of champaign appeared unsolicited. Nix pulled both of them over to his side of the table without comment. He chugged one back, bubbles making his eyes water, and then wiped his mouth and said, "I'm sorry."

"What for?" Dick asked. He felt like drinking might help him get through this, but Nix was right about there being a time and a place to develop new vices, and Dick had enough already.

Nix shrugged. "I don't know," he said, speaking just above a whisper, so Dick had to lean in to hear. "For stamping around slamming doors when you're the one that's hurting, I guess."

"It doesn't hurt any more," Dick said the second before he realised that Nix probably didn't mean literally. "I really did forget about them," he added. He'd been doing his best to forget about the whole thing, and had almost done it, for a few hours at least. "It was only once."

Nix looked at the second glass of champagne like he was weighing slamming it back as well as versus then not having anything to drink. "Jesus," he muttered and drank. "That's what I mean. You shouldn't have to pretend just to make me feel better."

"Maybe pretending makes me feel better too," Dick said, even though he wasn't sure if that was true or not. Of the options he'd tried, denial was preferable to ragged sobbing or staring off into space for hours.

Before Nix could answer, the waiter reappeared with bowls of pale pink soup, which was cold. Dick raised his eyebrows, and Nix shrugged again. It tasted all right, at least, and Nix snagged both glasses of white wine as soon as they were poured.

"Then I should leave it alone and let you feel better," Nix said, picking up the conversation. "I'm not very good at this."

Dick smiled. "You're doing your best, Lew." Having Nix there—even half drunk and all anger—was so much better than trying to go forward alone. Even if they were both falling down, at least Dick had someone to hold onto now. "It was... uh... going all right before, wasn't it?"

"More than all right," Nix answered, smiling back, and his fingertips brushed Dick's before he turned to his soup.

"What did you order?" Dick asked. He thought the soup might be some kind of fish, but wasn't sure.

"I told him to surprise me." Nix flashed him a knee-weakening smile, and added, "Then tipped him enough to make it a good surprise. I think."

Nix had more faith in French waiters than Dick did, but he let that pass. He smiled and said, "It's not bad."

They talked about nothing at all for the rest of the evening.

* * *

That night, after Dick had poured Nix into bed, he stripped and tried to see his ass in the small bathroom mirror. He had to stand half way into the main room and crane his neck to get a good look, but he could still see why it had upset Nix. Four sharp lines of green and yellow bruising criss-crossed both cheeks, still deep purple where they intersected. Lower down, he had marks of Muldoon's fingers on the insides of his knees, but he didn't know if Nix had seen those. There certainly wasn't any way to explain the switch marks save the obvious.

Dick knew that he should feel appalled, or angry, but mostly he just felt tired. He would have to avoid showering and seeing the docs as well now until the marks faded, and how long would that take? His light skin had always held bruises for a long time. Muldoon had probably known that, too, just looking at him. _I always liked the look of you_ , he'd said. Dick turned and faced the mirror, trying to see what in him had drawn Muldoon in, but he couldn't tell. To his own eyes, he looked too pale and too thin and too tired to be worth pursuing, but maybe that was what Muldoon had wanted. Nix had commented that Muldoon had known exactly how far to push Dick, and though he'd miscalculated that in the end, it had been true for days, would still have been true if Nix hadn't snapped Dick out of his confusion and despair. Had Muldoon looked at him and been able to see that ability to be bullied? Had he seen weakness?

Or had it just been that Dick was in the wrong place at the wrong time? There was no one left alive to ask now, and in any case Muldoon would have only told him what he thought would cut most deeply.

He thought of asking Nix if he understood. He at least had looked at Dick and seen something he wanted, even if Dick had never been sure what that was. But he would be offended by the comparison, and as Dick thought about it, he realised that he already knew what Nix thought the answer was. Nix thought that Muldoon had picked Dick because of his relationship with Nix and for no other reason. Nix thought that all of this was his fault, that Muldoon's actions were his responsibility, that Dick had been hurt because of Nix. Dick didn't think there was anything that he could say that would change Nix's mind, make him see that he was the one blameless person in this whole mess. Everything he'd tried had just hurt Nix worse, and Dick didn't think that well of guilt they both felt was going to run dry any time soon.

Maybe the only cure both of them was for Dick to stop hurting.

Turning away from his reflection, Dick pulled his briefs and undershirt back on and crawled into bed behind Nix. He had to elbow him in the ribs to get him to nudge over until Dick could curl up behind him, wrapping an arm over Nix's waist and pressing their legs together. He buried his face in the back of Nix's neck and drew in a deep breath, letting Nix's hair tickle his nose.

"That's nice," Nix murmured sleepily, and pushed his ass back against Dick's thighs. "Just stay there."

"I will," Dick said. "Go to sleep."

He'd forgotten to take a sleeping pill, he realised, but soon found himself drifting away.

He dreamed that he was walking naked through the streets of Haguenau. He had to get somewhere, but he couldn't see where he was through the swirl of falling snow. He was glad the snow was hiding him. All he had to do was cross the town, and none of the men would have to see, but as he walked, he kept meeting troopers in the blizzard. One by one he met them—Lipton, Luz, Muck, Hall, Sobel, Sink—and one by one they all looked at him and turned away without a word.

He realised he was looking for Lew, but that if he found him he'd have to explain his nakedness and why he was no longer welcome in the regiment. Dick turned away from the town streets and into the countryside. If you walked into the snow for long enough, you fell asleep, he remembered. The desire to keep going would sink into a need to curl in on yourself and rest, and then you wouldn't have to worry about anything ever again. Dick came to a hedgerow with a gap in it and pushed into the darkness. There was a jeep there, and Lew was sleeping in it already. Dick crawled into the passenger seat and closed his eyes.

* * *

Dick walked the streets alone for most of the morning, looking at the ancient buildings and bridges over the Somme. He marvelled, as he had in Paris, at where this war had taken him, and wondered if he would ever return to see it again in peacetime. What did this nation look like when it prospered in the sun?

There was a strange sort of twisting pathway laid in black and white stone on the floor of the cathedral. He tried to follow it with his eyes, but it turned back and forth on itself and chairs covered half the floor. It tugged at him oddly, like a dream, and he thought that maybe if he could tease out the pattern, make the crooked roads straight and the rough places plain, that he would feel more at ease with himself, or at least know what he felt. The choir was practising high above the cathedral floor—higher than the steeple the little Lutheran church Dick had grown up in—and they really did sound like the voices of angels. The closest to heaven he might ever get, he thought, and then shook his head and pushed back out into the street.

He coaxed Nix out of bed around noon with a bag of buttery pastries and a promise of coffee. They spent the day walking easily together, sharing the city as they'd shared Paris the previous December. He felt light again, happy at the companionship they found in each other. Nix mostly talked, and Dick mostly listened, and it was like it had been before.

Only he knew that it wasn't, and he knew that Nix knew that too, and that hung in the air with an almost physical presence. This familiarity and comfort would only last until the next reminder of what had happened, and then they would strike and spin away from each other, angry and stricken with grief for what had been. He felt as though a three-legged race through a minefield would have fewer hazards, but he didn't know how to change direction, and he didn't think he could stop.

There was, of course, the option of disarming the mines, but that required the kind of courage and expertise that Dick wasn't sure he still had.

None of the restaurants seemed to open until late, and the ended up eating at the a PX, which Nix said was a waste of liberty, and Dick found reassuringly familiar.

As they walked back up to their room, Dick realised that he was growing nervous again, and resented the feeling. He should be able to spend an evening with the man he loved—his best friend, who he trusted with his soul—without being afraid of what would happen.

Nix at least wasn't angry this time. He just sighed and stripped out of his jacket and tie. "I'm pouring a bath," he said. "Want to join me?"

"No," Dick said before he even thought about it, and then when he didn't think about it couldn't decide if his instinctive rejection had been because he didn't want Nix to see him naked again, or because one wrong touch in such a close quarters would send him into a panic, or because he didn't want to retroactively ruin the memory of that bath in Paris.

The worst part was that Nix tried to cover of hurt on his face by turning away for a moment, and then flashing a tight smile, and saying that he'd try not to use all the hot water in the hotel. Dick already hated both the phoniness of that smile and the knowledge that he was going to be seeing a lot of it in days ahead. Nix had promised to let Dick pretend there was nothing wrong, and bless him he was trying, but Dick could see how much it hurt every time.

He was so tired of hurting Nix. If they had been in that minefield, he would have just looked up and realised that it was twice as wide as he'd thought, and boggy besides, and Nix would have been blindfolded.

"Can we talk instead?" he asked.

Now Nix smiled for real, like he had coming in with those passes for Amiens, like Dick had just given him his birthday present early. "Yeah. Of course." He sat on the edge of the bed nearest the window, and looked up at Dick expectantly.

Dick sat on the bed across from him. He wanted the comfort of their legs touching, but he knew that if he was going to do this, he was going to have to look it in the eye and charge straight in, like he'd run at the high embankment of crossroads in Holland. "You said that if I ever wanted to tell you what happened, that you'd listen."

Nix took a breath and lifted his chin a little, preparing for a blow, but then he nodded. "If it'd make you feel better, yeah."

Lord, he was so brave, and Dick loved him for it, along with a thousand other reasons. "I think not telling you is making me feel worse," he admitted, "and I'm tired of being afraid." Dick leaned forward, braced his elbows on his knees, took a deep breath, and started to talk.

Nix listened.

**Author's Note:**

> And that's all, folks! Thanks for sticking with me through all this. I've really appreciated the comments and support.


End file.
